A further fact about Conan O’brien which I didn’t mention yesterday is that despite having over 50,000 followers on Twitter, he chooses to only follow one person. A lucky young lady whose life he claims will change forever on the back of his exclusive following. But due to an ‘Accept’ fan from Turkeys lucky discovery, Conan was suddenly following 14 people.
Being a fan of a band called ‘Accept’ he tweeted the phrase “accept pwnz” to show his love for them. But when instead of seeing his post, he found he was instead suddenly following “pwnz.” Slow realization became excitement as he found he could make anyone he wanted follow him, including celebrities. Obviously this was a bug, which was originally designed for use by people who have their tweets protected. The command was to be used so that you could ask them to accept you instead of instantly following them. A quite simple command with devastating consequences when this single ‘Accept’ fan used it, notably without malice on his part, with someone’s username, eg ‘accept @billgates.’
Unsurprisingly word of this hack spread like wild fire and soon everyone was forcing people to follow them, left right and centre. Twitter soon cottoned on but was forced to temporarily reset many accounts as it dealt with the loophole. This made it appear that users were following no one and no one was following them. Twitters statement on the bug is as follows:
“We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to “force” other users to follow them. We’re now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place. Follower/following numbers are currently at 0; we’re aware and this too should shortly be resolved.
Update (10:18 AM PST): Of note: protected updates did not become public as a result of this bug.
Update (2:42 PM PST): We’re continuing work on rolling back abuse of the bug; in the meantime, if there’s folks you’re following that you didn’t choose to follow, you can block them or unfollow them.
Update (6:30 PM PST): We’ve finished our cleanup of the spurious followings generated a result of this bug. If you are still seeing folks you are following who you didn’t choose to follow, please use the block or unfollow tools to remedy.”
While this was a fairly simple fix for Twitter with negligible consequences, the question is what other loopholes and glitches are there still floating around? And with Twitter launching the beta test of its ‘Business Centre’ one may think twice before choosing to be involved in expanding a brand or organisation with them.
Accept @ Cozy Digital0nline anyone?
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