Around 6 PM on March 11th—a Saturday—four emails landed in my inbox. Not in Focused (where I get alerts) but in my Other Inbox which usually indicates not-so-personal or urgent business, like a neighborhood newsletter. So it was about 11 PM when I checked my Other inbox and found the emails, spaced a few minutes apart, all from Twitter:
Security Alert: New or Unusual Twitter login (Probably some junk/spam)
New Login on Twitter (Well, that’s kinda interesting.)
Your Twitter Password has been changed (What the heck?)
Email address for CCHall_Author has been changed (WHAT THE HECK?)
Still, I was not freaking out completely because it had to be some kind of phishing, right? I mean, I’m a nobody in social media world; I have less than 1,000 followers. Who’d want my Twitter account?
But sure enough, I can’t get into Twitter with my email so now, I am kinda freaking out. Because (as per the emails) someone has hacked my Twitter account and taken it over. Next, I use my gmail account and basically set up a new account for Cathy Hall so I can login. I find CCHall_Author, just sitting there, looking all innocent.
Everything is just the way I left it. Except it’s not me. It’s some scoundrel with nothing better to do than steal my account.
It’s a bit ironic, y’all. I don’t use Twitter much. It’s connected to my website so that when I post, it posts on Twitter. And since January, I’ve been working on writing the next novel and thinking about the new website so I haven’t posted on my own site. And I can’t help wondering if that’s why someone thought it would be okay to usurp my Twitter account. Because I wasn’t using it? Like my Twitter account is some kind of parking space that someone can avail themselves of because I’m not in need of it right now.
I’m not having that. So I contact Twitter to let them know I’ve been hijacked and unfortunately, the onus is upon the legitimate user to prove legitimacy. So I fill out a form and promise my first-born child and before midnight I hear back. To wit, we’ll look into it, just give Twitter a few days.
About four days later, “we’re on it!” apparently means the account is suspended. It may have been immediately suspended and it was 72 hours before the notification went up but whatever. I can’t use it and neither can he/she/it (since I’m not discounting a bot/AI).
On March 30th—nearly three weeks later!—Twitter contacted me about the Twitter Impersonation Case. To get back my account, I’ll need to fill out another form, promise another child, and somehow prove that I am the rightful owner of CCHall_author. I felt like I was on To Tell the Truth, standing up to say, “I’m Cathy C. Hall, the author.”
Anyway, as it happened, I had a few screenshots of my Twitter account to back up my claim. But I still haven’t heard from Elon Musk or anyone else at Twitter about my account.
I’ve got a few questions to ask when I do:
Does this sort of Twitter hijacking happen regularly?
Why steal a fairly ordinary account with little usage and even less followers?
Who does this Twitter thief think he is? And why is all the work on me to get the account back?
To be honest, if I weren’t putting out a book, I’d probably throw in the Twitter towel at this point. But I worked hard for those followers—mostly writers and readers. Then again, it’s a bit humbling that no one has contacted me to ask about the suspension.
So Twitter User, beware. I strongly suggest that you make screenshots of your account, just in case. And if you’ve had experience with this sort of Twitter trouble, I’d love to hear about it and/or what else I can do because I am down to my last kid.
