Out to dinner on a Saturday night, we come home late. I check my mail, see an email change request made to my Twitter account hours earlier (above). I click through the link to deny the request + say this isn’t me, but it’s too late: The e-mail associated with the account, the password, and even the username have all been already changed.
I file a report, which generates a Kafkaesque hellscape of automated e-mail loops, none of which ever reach a human and none of which satisfactorily resolve the issue. The inquiry is closed (no action taken) and I get a lovely email asking me to rank the quality of the Twitter Support (Timeliness 8/10; Did we resolve the issue? 0/10).
I create a new account with @Barry_Ritholtz, then change it to my old Twitter handle (@Ritholtz), to make sure no one else can grab it. And I keep adding more info to the email response from Twitter Support.
So if you see this post, be aware that @RITHOLTZWEALTHS is not me or the firm, it’s the hackers, and that’s not me posting racist crap or pushing shitcoins.
Over the 36 hours since the hack took place, Twitter Support has been an exercise in frustration. From the new account, I filed an impersonation report, noting that my account was hacked and the new account (@Ritholtz) is what I am using to access support. They asked for a government ID, so maybe that’s a good sign.
If there is a silver lining, its that this led me to change lots of passwords, add two-factor authentication1 (2FA) everywhere, and a separate digital authenticator.
I am way too addicted to Twitter as a news/research tool and need to find backups.
In the meantime, if you would be so kind as to file an impersonation report for @RitholtzWealths it would be greatly appreciated . . .
UPDATE October 3 2023
Yay! FInally got my Twitter (now X) account back.
Never would have happened without being affiliated with a big media company — I cannot imagine how other people manage if and when they get hacked.
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1. I had 2FA on Twitter until some genius thought removing it was a good marketing idea to sell monthly subscrtiptions.
