Read the anti-racism post that got me banned from twitter

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Well my last tweet didn’t seem very bot-like to me; algorithms might have tagged me as a racist troll though (ironically). Not sure what twitter is picking up.

There’s no evidence that deleting your phone number on your account deletes your phone number from their records. It is in the financial interest of twitter to use your phone number to increase their ad revenue. Furthermore, they routinely capture phone numbers from third party apps for the purposes of doing exactly this. They value this information.

What can be done with a phone number? As of May 17 researchers at Carnegie Mellon University documented that California based tracking firm LocationSmart permited real time location lookups for anyone who visited their website and wanted to try their product. Ok, they’ve disabled the demo now. But aggregation firms like them haven’t gone out of business. Yet.

On June 18, Krebs Security reported that AT&T, Sprint and Verizon claim they are terminating location data sharing agreements with third parties. That’s nice. Later there was a tweet by T-Mobile. That said I remain dubious about announcements that can later be reversed. It’s easy to imagine this sort of thing being handled by legislation. That hasn’t happened yet.

Tech security reporter Brian Krebs:

[INDENT] Blake Reid, an associate clinical professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, said the entire mobile location-sharing debacle shows the futility of transitive trust.

“The carriers basically have arrangements with these location aggregators that contractually say, ‘You agree not to use this access we provide you without getting customer consent’,” Reid said. “Then that aggregator has a relationship with another aggregator, and so on. So what we then have is this long chain of trust where no one has ever consented to the provision of the location information, and yet it ends up getting disclosed anyhow.”

Curious how we got here and what Congress or federal regulators might do about the current situation? Check out last month’s story, Why Is Your Location Data No Longer Private. [/INDENT]

22

Credit cards actually have reasonably good protections IMHO. At the end of the day you are liable for a maximum of $50. As a result credit card companies put some effort into security, because the burden falls on them. Good policy. That doesn’t mean that consumers don’t get hassled: I’ve been a victim of credit fraud twice for example. But it does mean that they are pro-active to some extent at least. I do wish I could attach a PIN to my credit card like you can in Europe: I’m not saying things are perfect.

Credit cards have higher protections than debit cards. That’s unfortunate, since it would be straightforward to extend the rules in a similar way. Cell numbers are wild-west - virtually unregulated and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I get enough junk phone calls on my cell as it is, and quite a few more on the landline.
More fun news from Verge: [INDENT] Facebook has been collecting call records and SMS data from Android devices for years. Several Twitter users have reported finding months or years of call history data in their downloadable Facebook data file. [/INDENT]

23

More news: Today twitter announced that it had made its first acquisition in 18 months with the purchase of Smyte, a silicon valley company specializing in safety, spam, and security issues. They say want to catch problems before they affect the user experience, which I take to mean that your posts will be pre-filtered.

Fine by me. I just don’t want to them to leverage my robocall experience.

Twitter Wants to Smyte Trolls | The Motley Fool

Twitter welcomes them in their blog, while smyte.com bids their users a farewell experience.

24

I’m back on twitter, all without submitting a telephone number. They sent me this email:

[INDENT]Hello,

Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (The Twitter rules: safety, privacy, authenticity, and more).

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.

Thanks,

Twitter Support[/INDENT] I have no idea what could have set off a reasonable spam bot. I haven’t added to my following list in weeks. My followers list changed by a maximum of 1 over the past week or so. On June 16th, I retweeted five times, submitted a comment, retweeted again, then submitted the comment at the top of the OP. Then I was sent to the ban screen.

Their allegations are too vague for me to act on. I presume this was a bug at their end, of unknown nature. It’s not clear what would have happened if I gave them a phone number. We shouldn’t assume that it would automatically reactivate my account, given the bugginess of their procedures.

Best wishes to Smyte, the newest addition to their team!

25

Update Jan 1, 2019

Twitter has just noted unusual activity and locked my account. To unlock it, I need to complete a google captcha (no problem) and provide my mobile cell phone number (LOL).

I honestly don’t know what triggered this latest issue. I don’t think my posting behavior has been that unusual over the past couple of days. I suspect they just want my cell number. I think I’ll just lay off twitter for a while. Admittedly, they have sent me emails noting that I’ve logged in from 2 servers that I indeed logged in on during my travels. Also VPN.

Oddly, I purchased some twitter ads on a lark last year. So they have my credit card number, and I’d be happy to provide it again for verification purposes. But I’m frankly suspicious of requests for my cell number without giving good reason. Or contractual assurances that they won’t fall in the hands of spammers, combined with penalties if that happens. Why should I believe that twitter gives a damn about their security, given this laughably opaque behavior?

In other news Abine Blur offers a total privacy solution. I have no affiliation with this company, except that I anticipate becoming one of their paying customers soon. They offer burner phone numbers and other services: I wonder whether they might be helpful. https://www.abine.com/index.html

26

All I did was register, add a few interests, click to follow maybe three things (along the lines of ‘UK Horticulture and Agriculture’, which is hardly especially suspect) and ten minutes later I got suspended and asked to provide a phone number.

Nope. If they require a phone number, they shouldn’t have given me an ‘opt out’ on the registration page.

27

Twitter responds:

[INDENT]Hello,

Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules: The Twitter rules: safety, privacy, authenticity, and more.

In order to continue safely using Twitter, please follow these steps:

Log in to your account on the web or open your Twitter app (iOS or Android).
You’ll see a prompt letting you know your account has been locked. Click or tap “Start”.
Select your country/region from the drop down menu, and then enter your phone number. 
Click “Send code” and Twitter will send you a text message with a confirmation code (note that your standard message rates may apply). 
Enter the code you received in the “Your code” box and click “Submit”.
You will see a confirmation message that your account is now unlocked.

Once you confirm your identity, it may take up to a few minutes for your account to be unlocked.

If you’re still experiencing an issue after confirming your identity, please reply to this message and provide us with specific details of the problem you’re experiencing. We’ll do our best to help!

Thanks,

Twitter Support [/INDENT] Automated behavior: Maybe I followed 3 new people within an hour and within a day. This is silly.

When I try giving a phone number (masked, via Abine Blur) it says “Unsupported number”. I guess they’re on to that, though I’m not sure how.

I find twitter’s disingenuousness to be disconcerting. Methinks they’ve lost one of their few paying customers, ironically.

28

This September 2017 blog post Are Twitter’s ‘Locked Accounts’ a Ransom Racket?, discusses twitter’s habit of locking accounts for vague reasons in order to get the user to cough up their cell phone number.

Vague reasons: [INDENT] “Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules” [/INDENT] and [INDENT] “We’ve locked your account because we’ve detected some unusual activity” [/INDENT] Twitter’s privacy policy states: “If you provide us with your phone number, you agree to receive text messages to that number from us.” Ookay.

The article describes how twitter automatically unfollows people on locked accounts, possibly to add to the feelings of panic. And how asking for a phone number does nothing to stop automated accounts, while multi-step captchas actually work.

29

You think they should have stored your credit card number for verification purposes, but won’t give them your phone number?

Color me clueless, but I believe a lot more damage has been done by leaked customer data with credit card info than customer data with phone numbers.

30

Oh sure, I’d be happy if they tossed my cc info. I’m not convinced they did though. I might be wrong. I mean most of their ad customers won’t be entering that info every time they make an ad purchase, right?

As for your question, my financial liability from a stolen credit card is limited to $50 and is generally waived by the credit card company. You do lose hours of time though, speaking as someone who has been a victim of credit card fraud, twice.
At any rate, if they wanted to verify my identity, they could use email. If they wanted to stop automatic posting, they would use multi-step captchas. If they wanted to curb misinformation… they wouldn’t find any in my twitter posts. What would my cell phone give them, that they don’t already have with a) a record of me buying a twitter ad (on a lark) and b) my existing email address?

They want my cell number for running ads and possibly selling it to 3rd parties. Their justifications are dishonest excuses, intended to mislead and browbeat. This is not a company worthy of my trust, and yeah I don’t intend to give them my main credit card number again.

31

There are any number of free texting apps which give one a free phone number.

32

Twitter: “Unsupported phone number”.
Tried that with Abine Blur’s phone as well as textfree’s.

ETA: Good point though: worth a try. Thnx.

33

Email from twitter: Hello,

Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (The Twitter rules: safety, privacy, authenticity, and more).

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.

Thanks,

Twitter Support While I’m happy to be back on twitter, I’m dubious about their stated reasons: methinks the false positives in their algorithm were privacy-invading features, not bugs. I honestly am not sure what set off their algorithm, other than possibly 5 and 1/2 months passing after their last cell number request. Twitter has squandered the good will I once had for them.

Moving forward, I hope to create an IMHO thread devoted to alternatives to twitter.

34

Third time: Jan 23, 2019

Here we go again:
What happened?
Your account appears to have exhibited unusual behavior that violates the Twitter Rules. To unlock your account, please complete the steps below and confirm that you are the valid account owner.
What you can do:
To unlock your account, you must do the following:

Pass a Google reCAPTCHA challenge
Verify your phone number

When you tap ‘Start’, Google may collect and use information about you, your device, and browser. View Google’s Privacy Policy.
Judging from past experience, there is no unusual behavior, which is why they will never get specific about it. The reCaptcha step is just psychological foreplay. They want my cell number. If they wanted to ID me, they would shoot me an email like, you know, actual financial companies do.
ETA: I encourage my fellow posters to view my latest tweets and evaluate whether there was anything close to rule breaking.

35

In my experience, it didn’t have anything to do with tweets. I got that message. I haven’t posted a single tweet. All I did was sign up.

In my case, the last part of the sign up process didn’t go through as expected, so the automated bot tried to get more verification.

On my first sign up, all they asked for was a reCaptcha. On the second sign up, they required a phone number. I let that account go.

It’s possible that some script blocker or ad blocker triggered an algorithm that caused the suspicion.

ETA: I think you might be giving undue weight to the content of the tweets. It seems possible it’s a technical issue.

36

I suspect their algorithm sets off a lot of false positives, which is just fine with twitter because what they want is my cell number, for ad-profile purposes. Of course they won’t indemnify me for inevitable hacks on their systems.

No thanks twitter.

37

I agree. Facebook does the same. When my webcam wouldn’t automatically turn on, they asked for my phone number.

But you seemed to have success with emailing them before. Maybe it will work again? I’m thinking of trying to email them if I get locked out.

It depends on what you’re looking for, but there’s an open source alternative to Twitter called Mastodon. It’s really small and niche. It’s mostly male and filled with programmers. But there are instances for other groups as well. Each instance has its own rules. Here’s a survey of Mastodon in July 2018 written on Medium.com but mostly based on Reddit users. It’s different from Twitter because Mastodon is decentralized so each server (instance) has its own rules. I’ve read about an instance from Japan that is huge, filled with people interested in some form of hentai (or something like that; I’m not familiar with it)

38

I really want to try Mastadon.

Last time, email gave me some success, but it took a few of days. I’m happy to say that this time it only took 2 emails and a few hours.

Twitter message 1: Hello,

Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules: The Twitter rules: safety, privacy, authenticity, and more.

In order to continue safely using Twitter, please follow these steps:

Log in to your account on the web or open your Twitter app (iOS or Android).
You’ll see a prompt letting you know your account has been locked. Click or tap “Start”.
Select your country/region from the drop down menu, and then enter your phone number. 
Click “Send code” and Twitter will send you a text message with a confirmation code (note that your standard message rates may apply). 
Enter the code you received in the “Your code” box and click “Submit”.
You will see a confirmation message that your account is now unlocked.

Once you confirm your identity, it may take up to a few minutes for your account to be unlocked.

If you’re still experiencing an issue after confirming your identity, please reply to this message and provide us with specific details of the problem you’re experiencing. We’ll do our best to help!

Thanks,

Twitter Support

I reply that I don’t want to give my cell number. Twitter message 2:

Hello,

Your account is now unlocked, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.

Twitter has automated systems that find and remove automated spam accounts and it looks like your account got caught up in one of these spam groups by mistake. This sometimes happens when an account exhibits automated behavior in violation of the Twitter Rules (The Twitter rules: safety, privacy, authenticity, and more).

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not respond to this email as replies will not be monitored.

Thanks,

Twitter Support I have absolutely no idea what they mean by automated behavior. I do have the botcheckme plugin on my copy of firefox which scans for - you know- Russian twitter bots tweeting political propaganda. One would think that they would want to encourage that and maybe they do.

Google never gives me this nonsense.

39

I’m not on Twitter, but Google and Facebook have both suspended me after trying to log on from a different computer. They ID a different computer (and I don’t like that right off) and ask for a cell number to receive their text.

Nope. Robocalls (and now robotexts) disturb my calm too often as is.

Google allowed me to logon from home and presented me with a bright red alert that is still there, even after telling it that it was I trying to access my account. Facebook I told to FO if they didn’t want to reinstate me.

Target ads suck. Advertisers used up their slack decades ago with the popovers, popunders, loud clips, and crap I have to endure to access content. If I can’t tweak my broweser, AdBlock and NoScript (reactions to excessively intrusive ads) enough to view a site, then I don’t need to visit that site.

I can’t recall the last time I couldn’t view a site on my terms.

40

I can get texts on my landline. I know this because someone occasionally sends me a text to that number. It gets read out by the text-to-voice thing, and goes into my voicemail, where I find and delete it days or weeks later.