Twitter Mistakenly Resets Untold Number Of Passwords

Earlier today several Twitter accounts had their passwords reset and an email was erroneous sent to the users prompting them to change their passwords immediately.

"Twitter believes that your account may have been compromised by a website or service not associated with Twitter. We've reset your password to prevent others from accessing your account," read an email with a timestamp of around 2:30 a.m. ET Thursday.

According to the official statement on the Official Twitter Status page this email was sent in error and those users might not actually have been affected.

We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community. As part of that commitment, in instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

As always, we recommend that people review these tips on how to keep their Twitter accounts secure: https://support.twitter.com/articles/76036-keeping-your-account-secure#

Even still users that had received the email will need to update their passwords, and just in case anyone else that is concerned that this might not have been in error should do so as well. It is always good practice to change your passwords on a regular basis just in case. Just make sure you follow some of the practices outlined in our recent post Top 10 Worst Passwords of 2012.