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Ask HN: Twitter Account Ownership Issue?

4 points by mknappen ↗ HN
A coworker just set up a Twitter account and, apparently, inadvertently took over another person's active account. I haven't been able to recreate the problem using my own account. Twitter dev support has "encountered an unexpected error" both times I attempted to post this issue. Has anyone else out there seen this?

4 comments

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3825
>inadvertently took over another person's active account

Care to elaborate? Did the other person and your coworker have access to the email address used when registering the twitter account? Had the previous user validated his email address?

mknappen
My coworker insists the email address was never validated and no one else ever logged in from this email address. After registering, the account came up with nearly 100 following and followers, none known by my coworker. The standard new user demo never happened. My coworker then changed the user name, and user profile information as a precaution. The actual owner of the account would likely now be able to login or re-register with their user name, but their followers would be gone.
3825
It is the other guy's fault for not verifying their email address. If I register with someone@whitehouse.gov email address, I would assume someone with that email handle can claim my twitter account.