Change your Twitter password. Don’t even read the rest of this yet, open Twitter and change your password. Go to Settings, and there it is. Do it.
Done it? Cool. Did you pick something stupid? You did, didn’t you? You had a few drinks last night and you’re feeling a bit silly and you’ve changed your password to topboylegend6969 like a big daft dafty. Go and change it again to something sensible but difficult, go on.
Right. Good work. Why did you have to do that then?
Well, Twitter just admitted on their blog that they accidentally stored a load of passwords in plaintext on an internal log. While they have no reason to believe anyone accessed the passwords, and there were still security measures in place, and it was only a small amount of passwords, it’s still sensible to change yours.
What then sucks is, if you used that same password elsewhere, you probably want to change it there as well.
Like, you might think “It’s only my Twitter, what’s the worst anyone’s going to do, tweet their bottom at someone?”, but if you use the same password for everything, then whoever has that can also get in your email, your bank, everything. And then, you’re DOOOOOOOOOOMED.
In fact, if you want to do things hella vigilantly, you probably want to get on something like LastPass or 1Password, password management software that keeps everything crazy safe.
What’s more concerning is that Twitter let this happen. This isn’t some two-bob operation, it’s Twitter. It’s massive. What the hell are they doing ever, ever, storing passwords unencrypted?
It’s not like Twitter don’t have the time to work on security - they have loads of time, time they save by ignoring complaints of racism, misogyny and abuse.
Come on guys, time to up your game. But, in the meantime, make sure you change that password.
(Image: Getty)
