Why I hate Twitter

Once again, my Twitter account (erictlee) and LabourStart’s (labourstart) have been hacked, and spam direct messages sent to followers.

Twitter’s advice when this sort of thing happens is to change your password, which I’ve done, but there’s another bit of advice worth paying attention to:

Chances are there are many applications that can access one’s Twitter account, especially if you’ve been online for a while and have tried new things. Among the apps that I discovered had access to my Twitter account were the following:

  • Klout
  • Pinterest
  • About.me
  • Flipboard
  • Ning
  • Linkedin
  • Act.ly
  • Posterous

And several more.

In revoking permission for all these apps, I’ve locked the barn door as it were.  I recommend that others also change their Twitter passwords and consider revoking permission especially for apps they don’t use.  (Did I ever use Pinterest?  Or About.me?)

Apologies to all those who got stupid spam direct messages from “me” as a result.