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Deleted Twitter account, now someone else has access to updating my FB status

19 points by hyyypr ↗ HN
I delete my twitter account some time back, since I wasn't seeing the point of it as a regular internet user (ie. not releasing 'important stuff', still having love for traditional rss, not being fond of sharing my latest poop with the whole world, etc.).

Back when I had that account, my updates were linked to my facebook account. Now a new guy registered a twitter account with my old nickname, and HIS updates appear on MY facebook account.

I could probably delete the twitter app from my FB account, but that's not the point. The point is that although my account is suppressed, it is still somehow linked to my personnal FB account.

How lame is that ?

13 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 41.3 ms ] thread
pierrefar
Did you contact Twitter? If yes what did they say?
hyyypr
I tried (not very hard) to report it. But wasn't able to find an contact email.
bmickler
Well, I hope the new guy isn't "fond of sharing [his] latest poop with the whole world..." Else, you'll be taking the credit for it on your FB page!
p858snake
They have a "get satisfaction" account (if I've remembered the correct service name), post onto that, they use that for bugs and all that whoohar.
mcav
Twitter can't fix this, unless the FB application is only using Twitter's authentication system to ensure it's properly linked.

Facebook twitter apps can just scrape twitter for your most recent status update -- if that's the case, they don't even need your twitter password to get updates.

(I don't know how that twitter->facebook app works, but given your situation, that's what I'd guess. So there isn't anything Twitter could do to stop it.)

steveklabnik
I switched twitter names a while back, and even if I un and re install the app, it still won't update my facebook status.

I pretty much just gave up.

pmjordan
I suspect the facebook app just subscribes to a bunch of giant search feeds for all users and then dishes out any new messages. There's no authentication involved in twitter searches so neither Facebook, nor the author of the FB app, nor Twitter are to blame: you are. You should have deleted the app when you deleted your twitter account.
ivankirigin
I don't understand what is wrong with editing the application settings: http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php

What magic did you expect to happen to make this right? Should twitter's facebook app have disabled itself? I think that is correct behavior for deactivating an account.

On a similar note, you could control the apps on twitter with this tool: http://twitter.com/account/connections [unless you've given out your password, then you need to change it]

hyyypr
Which I did, but the fact is that I didn't realize this before a stranger updated my FB status, which could have had some consequences if it happened on a "professional" FB account.
ivankirigin
If you had a professional facebook account, you would also have a better grip over your profiles on other services. You would never abandon a username associated with your online identity.

Much more important to professionals is the risk of phishing or breaking into accounts.

anamax
This is a problem with the twitter api, which makes it easy to use twitter screen names, which are not permanent, and not twitter user ids, which are permanent.
hyyypr
This pretty much answers all other questions. It's not like I was using some third party facebook app, afaik it's twitter's official FB app. And they should definitly use some kind of UID.