Wednesday 12 May 2010

Bug Leaves Twitter Users With No Followers


Celebrities with millions of followers on Twitter were left bemused when they logged on to find every last one had disappeared.




Bosses at the social media networking website were forced to reset accounts after a major security loophole was uncovered.
That meant celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, who has built up a massive list of 3.5 million followers, were left with no followers at all.
The bug allowed Twitter users to force a celebrity to follow them.
That would also have opened up high profile users to spammers and abusive messages.
Twitter was forced to wipe people's accounts to fix the problem.
"We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to 'force' other users to follow them," the social networking site said.
"We're now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place."
Users eventually saw their followers return later in the day.
Twitter allows users to post messages - known as tweets - up to 140 characters long.
By "following" people, users can see what others are writing - but the relationship does not have to be reciprocal.
Twitter was launched in 2007 and now has more than 100 million users.

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