With the recent rash of people falling victim to phishing scams on Twitter, in comes this question by a reader regarding her account being compromised.
Hi there. My twitter account was a victim of phishing. Twitter suspended my account because of it. I have sent them a request to lift my suspension but haven’t heard from them the last 5 days since I lodged the request. Any tips on how I can get them to respond to my request?
Please keep in mind that telling her to avoid clicking links or entering their info into a random site is pretty much a moot point at this time. I think she’s pretty aware of that by now. What would you do in this situation, though?
@employed_online
I am sure you have already seen this on twitters help page but in case you haven’t:
Twitter Support:
Our Spam/Abuse or Support team researches suspended accounts. If you feel your account has been wrongly suspended, please visit Twitter Support and file a request. If you’re logged into Twitter, you can visit Twitter Support by clicking the help link directly from your Twitter account.
Submit a request: your ticket will be submitted to Twitter Support and we’ll email you a ticket confirmation. Accounts may be suspended for a minimum of 30 days for research. Check on your ticket status anytime by visiting your Twitter Support home page and clicking Check on your existing requests.
If you’re unable to submit a request through our help form, please send an email to suspended@twitter.com.
If you have gone over 30 days with no response and the email does not work I would try using their help link through your twitter account.
Being that twitter is so popular right now it may take them some time to get to your request but they will. Good luck!
A friend recently went through the same thing and had others tweet the following including someome at twitter that deals with spam, it helped his account get re-instated pretty quick –
@delbius please re-instate @insertyorutwittername account. He is not a spammer and his account should not be suspended
No guarantees, but it worked for someone I know.
@tweeminence
I would say send emails. Then send more emails. Eventually one will get noticed. The squeaky wheel gets the grease!
@anotherguy
Recently I had to contact Twitter to get some things fixed on my account, and writing a formal letter with the reasons why I was making the request made things move along pretty quickly. You can find their address on the support website. Type it up with all of your information and be professional about it, I’m positive they’ll help you out.
@mytwitrva
Everyone above has good advice…all I can add are a few simple things I have learned from dealing with other clients who have also had such experiences.
When you find a new application that requires your password and twitter id – don’t just enter it. Follow these steps first:
1. Do some research on the application and its owners/creators. Look up their website and their twitter profiles… see what kind of posts are on their profiles and what kind of history/experience they have from their about us page on their website.
2. Do a search on their application or their usernames on http://www.search.twitter.com and see what kind of comments are associated with it.
3. Do an internet search as well and see what you find here – it’s surprising if it is a ‘bad app’ what you can find from other people talking about their experiences.
4. Think about why you need to be entering your username and password. For instance, http://www.tweetlater.com requires it in order to publish tweets you create to your own profiles. Makes sense. If the app needs your login info in order to post tweets about their app and your use of it at any time then maybe it’s not the right kind (though some of these types are great tools that are useful too)
5. Don’t depend upon social media to be the sole support of your brand and business. Your website and online presence should be able to support your business without depending upon Twitter and Facebook and other social media channels to sustain them. You cannot control everything that happens with sites owned by others, but you can control what you own.
I honestly stick to applications that I feel have developed a reputation for being trustworthy, useful and a good support tool to your twitter usage. I believe in building a community on Twitter that has some semblance of quality over quantity and help my clients build their ‘tribes’ by finding them people that are interested in their topic and business, not that are just another notch in the numbers game.
@brianellefritz
I know it’s a burden for a small company but this is a big problem: Twitter, how about registry of “certified” sites that use Twitter IDs for login? We could check that first to get a sense of legitimacy without doing all the legwork that Kathy kindly offered up above. It would also encourage such companies to reveal themselves to you so you had a strong sense of who was using your API’s in this fashion. At least in an “above the table” way.
mine was also suspended by twitter, but then I got a mail saying that it has been reactivated ,still dont know why they suspended it
@MermaidHel
Do all the above, stay calm, stay cool. Be polite.
Those looking into the suspended accounts are working hard and as fast as they can. I don’t work there, but know someone who does and is currently working on backlogs of accounts, sometimes late into the evening. They’re hiring more people.
Helen
Straight From Hel