The current Twitter password situation, in plain English
February 3rd, 2010 by Allen VoivodHeard the news about Twitter? It’s yet another password hack, but it’s not really their fault. (Really!)
Since some of the things I’ve read required me to read them two and three time to understand what was up, and since I had a client ask me whether they should be worried about their account, I thought I’d share with you a very simple explanation for this latest Twitter security breach, and plan of action for you, in 6 easy points:
1. Some file-sharing websites/forums (also called “torrent” sites) have turned out to be hacker scams, thought out over the long-term. Hackers built online forums and sold them to unsuspecting folks, secretly keeping the ability to access complete lists of usernames and passwords 
for themselves.
2. As a sweeping generalization, people like to use the same username and password across all their different logins anywhere on the Internet whenever possible (from your newsletters to online banking to web-based email to Twitter).
3. When these hacker-compromised forums get popular and get enough users, there’s enough reason for hackers to go back in, pull the lists of usernames and passwords, and use them for nefarious purposes.
4. One of those nefarious purposes was to break into Twitter accounts - likely to send spam, scam people for more confidential information, et cetera.
5. So if you use file-sharing forums, or software like BitTorrent, and you want to keep using it, then you’ll need to change your password for Twitter (and would be advised to do it in every other online venue you use that requires a password).
6. And if not, then you don’t have to worry about it for the short term…but do consider the idea of changing passwords more frequently and (to be REALLY safe) use different passwords for different sites where possible, so they’re not repeated across websites/forums.
There. That was pretty simple, eh?
