Twitter Suspended My Account!
Yes, if you’re trying to find me on Twitter and you can’t, it’s because Twitter suspended my account. No, I did nothing to violate their Terms of Service, nor have they alleged that I have. Rather, something recent must have accidentally tripped some automatic alarm system, and their computer automatically locked me out of my account.
I’ve been using Twitter for years now, and I’ve even developed some real (though virtual) relationships that started via Twitter.
I really wanted to do a little tweeting before bed tonight, because catching up with my Twitter friends can be uplifting. But I can’t now. So instead of doing that, I’m blogging about why I’m not. And that sucks. Especially since I recently followed a bunch of other Holly Lisle fans, including other active writers, and their tweets are really interesting.
And maybe that’s what set off Twitter’s computer. That’s the only thing i can think of. I noticed that after I followed them, a few people “blocked” me, something that somewhat surprised me, because I’m not a spammer, and if they were interesting in keeping their tweets private, they would have made their profiles private. I know that Twitter has some automated trigger such that if a certain unspecified number of people block you (within a certain unspecified period of time?), Twitter will automatically suspend your account.
But all i did was to follow their public tweets, which is how you meet new people on Twitter. It’s always been that way. I know, because I’ve been on Twitter for years. While I understand that new people coming on Twitter may get annoyed, especially since there are spammers who follow a large number of people, just to get a large number of followers, and then these spammers don’t actually pay attention any of their friends’ tweets. And so I understand why some people may get bitter and want to lash out at anyone who they don’t know who follows them.
But you see, I’m not one of these spammers. I actually do pay attention to my Twitter friends’ tweets. Not all of them, all the time, but when I log onto Twitter, I actually do participate in the conversation. I’ve been doing this for years. And if Twitter had looked at my account longevity, they would have known that I wasn’t a spammer.
If their algorithm had a catch for account longevity, it wouldn’t have falsely triggered, as it did, and I would be tweeting with my friends right now, rather than complaining about how down in the dumps I feel about being cut off from them.
Oh well…
-TimK
P.S. I’ve signed up to Plurk, and I’ll be making friends there, too, now. Redundancy, you know.
UPDATE (11:04 PM EDT) — Twitter has unsuspended my account. They gave no reason for the suspension, and the support ticket I filed is still “awaiting assignment to a help desk operator.” Even so, I’ll be looking into using Plurk or some other service as a backup for Twitter in future.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
The suspension was silently lifted about 2 hours after I first discovered it. I received no explanation, but all has been normal since then. (Knock on wood.)
-TimK
Yep. It just happened to me as well. Account suspended. For no reason at all. When I click on the link to “find out more”, I am told “You do not have access to entry #xxxxx. It may have been deleted.”
WTF. In the last month I have been followed by about 50 spam accounts which I had to block one after another – the spammers are still around, but my account is gone. Way to go Twitter. You suck.
Yeah, Twitter just blocked me as spam, which is very ironic, given that whenever spammers follow me I make sure to block them – and report spam whenever I find it, be it via email or craigslist. I’m an e-marketer who is a PROUD anti-spammer, and for Twitter to mark people erroneously as spammers is hurtful.
What a great way to turn your advocates against you, congrats!
Jeremy, I suggest you immediately send a request to twitter (in case they have not put you off completely by now) and explain to them that you are a p*ssed off but real human being and that you would like your account back to normal as you deserve it.
(Just follow the link given when you see the “account suspended” message.)
Also helps to say what you told us about your anti-spam policy.
I did and although they didn’t even have the decency to send a reply, they did lift the suspension a day later.
Oh, and just to prove the point: A myriad of no less than 15 new spammers have followed me from the moment my account was reinstated until now, i.e. 24 hrs.
Hey this happened to me too and am still awaiting a reply and suspension lifting – I am truly gutted and most definitely not a spammer! I have loads of casino and porn people spamming me every day! This is a nightmare
Sam
@colletts
Yes, and to top it all, I have had the same t*t b*tch follow me 4 times after having blocked her 4 times. I can’t explain how this is possible except by saying: twitter sucks.
Hope you get your account back soon. If only to use it to bitch about tw*tter lol
I understand Twitter have to protect their API but the lack of communication is poor even just for an explanation and perhaps allowing me to find out what was wrong – I run a small holiday business and the relationships and networks I have built on twitter are invaluable. and because of my lack of knowledge about twitter i’ve been penalised – it’s a case of proven guilty before innocent. Help please twitter!
I too have had my account suspended and it appears there is no explaination. I have filled a ticket and created my own blog at http://www.andysweb.net/awblog/ …
My account ManintheField was suspended a week ago and despite sending 4 e-mails to Twitter, I’ve heard nothing. I’m utterly frustrated with it!
My account ManintheField was suspended a week ago and despite sending 4 e-mails to Twitter, I’ve heard nothing. I’m utterly frustrated with it!
Hi guys,
I just received this “reply” (kind of an automated general all-purpose message with the respective user name inserted in the greeting line, but anyway)…
Here goes. Hope it makes things clearer…
Thanks for your email. Some accounts were recently suspended for phishing investigation; these accounts should now be back to normal. If your account was suspended but is now back to normal, please do not reply to this email.
If you’re writing to report spam, just visit our spam profile and send us a direct message with the spammer’s user name, here:
http://twitter.com/spam
If you’re writing because your account was suspended, please visit your profile and make sure that your account is actually suspended. If your account is suspended, you’ll see a red box when you log in letting you know. If you don’t see a notice from Twitter, and you don’t see an owl when you visit your profile page, your account is not suspended.
We are currently working on fixing a bug that causes suspended accounts to appear in your followers list. No need for a ticket, we’re aware of and working on the problem.
If your account is suspended, please review the Twitter Rules:
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/18311
to find out why accounts are often suspended, and visit this page to find out what to do to contest suspension:
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/15790
Please do not reply to this email unless you need to contest a current suspension. Double check your profile to ensure that you’re actually suspended; if you need to contest suspension, please reply to this email and let us know. If you’re having a problem unrelated to suspension, please file a new request, not under Spam.
Thanks!
Twitter Support
Mine was suspended too. The strange thing is I tweet with a lot of people everyday. I have a lot of websites and I do post the links, but realistically that probably only makes up a small percentage of my tweets.
Here is what ticks me off more than anything. The few people that have commented to me directly about posting links were 1)Brand New to Twitter! and 2)The beauty of twitter is that you can BLOCK people!!! So if you are annoyed, block them!
I have said this for years. In a general sense, when dealing with the masses, people are just plain stupid! They are not happy unless they are screwing with someone else! Sorry, but I am furious that someone with potentially 3 minutes on twitter can get my 2 year account suspended for nothing! (I am only assuming that is what happened because there is no other explanation).
In any event, I doubt I will get any resolve because it doesn’t appear as though many do. So there goes my account (with over 7000 followers mind you), to someone with what? 10 followers and a bad attitude!
Twitter reserves the right “to refuse service to anyone for any reason at anytime.”. They can suspend your account for any reason without telling you why.
My Account @y4upeople Was Suspend ! I don’t why ! I understand how everyone is feeling !
Because I was really hurt ! You don’t have do any thing wrong because there are alot of people in the same boat !
Yeah, I know that Twitter reserves the right to refuse service or suspend your account. So that means I can’t sue them if they cut me off. That doesn’t make us feel any better, however, when we obey all the rules and support Twitter and they still suspend our accounts without explanation. Public perception is not governed by the legal provisions in their terms of service.
What I’m saying is that Twitter needs to establish a more communicative suspension procedure, because in their fight against spammers and illegitimate users, they’re going to accidentally suspend some portion of legitimate supporters. And as Twitter’s user base continues to expand, this is going to become an ever greater problem.
Ironically, Twitter probably doesn’t have to change their suspension algorithm. All they have to do is to program their computer to be a little more communicative concerning what tripped off the suspension and to provide a streamlined procedure for legitimate users to have their suspensions lifted.
-TimK
P.S. I know that Twitter may loathe to follow my suggestions, because they may be afraid (1) that spammers will take advantage of any information they give out regarding why an account was suspended and (2) that they’ll be inundated with reactivation requests. But (1) sophisticated spammers are already as informed as they’re going to get regarding what causes suspensions; they already know much more than legitimate users, surely, and always will, because they already do the research. And (2) they could at least design an appeal form that lists common legitimate appeals; it doesn’t have to overwhelm their support system. The whole idea is just to make legitimate customers feel more connected to Twitter support and keep them from getting pissed off.
P.P.S. What I used to do is to pipe my Twitter tweets to my Facebook account. What I do now is to use HelloTxt.com to post general updates to Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk, and I’m slowly building a following on Plurk, as an alternative to Twitter. (Note that I also have content that I post only on Twitter, only on Facebook, and only on Plurk.)
My account has been unsuspended!
After 4 e-mails to Twitter support over the past 10 days (with no response) I searched out Twitter staff. I then started sending Tweets to them from a secondary Twitter account and finally today, approximately an hour AFTER I had decided that all was lost and set up a new account and informed my friends, I received this direct message from a person at Twitter support.
f/u w/spam team. ur account was suspend because it appeared on our spam report posting a juste.ru video. the acct should be restored soon.
After doing a Google search on juste.ru video I found this article: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/30/new-twitter-virus-best-video/
All is explained (for me at least) and I’ve sent out a couple of tweets to inform others to be aware of this.
Good luck to all of you.
Did they unsuspend your account? My account was just suspended and have been e-mailing/sending requests to twitter support but don’t know what else to do?
My account was just suspended too. I can’t think of a reason – none on their TOS or list of reasons for suspension. Very frustrating. Think I’ll join Plurk while I wait for Twitter to get around to answering my complaints.
My acct. was suspended also today. I have not got a clue why for I read other peoples tweets and try to give helpful advise to people. I really enjoy twitter much more than facebook.
How long will a suspension last? I noticed today that someone who joined me on twitter was also suspended and she just started out.
Very very frustrating especially when there are people with thousands of people following them who send spam messages etc.
I am right there with you guys! Wasn’t even on twitter much today because of not feeling well. Tried to log on tonight and found out my account was suspended….
Uggh.
Hopefully they will correct this “human error” as mashable puts it.
I am @spreadingjoy
Hope to tweet with you soon!
Apparently Twitter accidentally did this to a bunch of people today, because they posted on their status blog about the accidentally suspended accounts. They say:
Earlier today, we accidentally suspended a number of accounts.
We regret the human error that led to these mistaken suspensions and we are working to restore the affected accounts—we expect this to be completed in the next several hours.
-TimK
Hey all,
Well, I joined the “account suspended” club this morning! Arrrrrr.
I have no idea why either. I started using Twitter in January. I have worked very hard to grow a list of quality followers.
I have never auto-followed peeps. I have never used one of those follower services. I don’t even use Tweetdeck. I have never spammed. I only re-tweet once in a while.
The only thing I can think of, is I do occasionally use TweetLater. Mainly I use it to shorten long URL’s. Sometimes I do use the tweetlater publish in 2 hours or whatever.
This is very frustrating. I use Twitter to communicate with family, friends, and business associates.
Rob
Although my account was, as I said, restored with as little explanation as it had intially been suspended, I keep wondering about the tw*ts that seem to run Twitter.
I still receive a daily 7 requests from spammers and bots – sometimes the same one I blocked a week before shows up again two or three times more in the weeks that follow. How can this be? And why are they still around while people – whom everyone can clearly see are normal people who just want to use their service to do what it is supposed to do – are continuously being suspended from doing so?
I am shaking my head in disbelief.
Hey Miriam,
Twitter have dealt with me before in the past and although I was initially annoyed as to why my account was suspended. I was reinstated after a timely response from friendly customer service at twitter.
I was caught up in yesterday’s accidental suspension and reinstated this morning
I honestly believe they are just snowed under and struggling to cope with the mountains of data and spam created on twitter and cant cope. As it gets bigger hopefully their team will too. And they will produce better spam killers.
Facebook struggled at the start…
Just look up auto unfollow on google and there are plenty of apps that help getting rid of the tripple xxx and repeat spammers automatically.
best wishes
sam @colletts
Hi Sam,
Thanks for that! I have protected my updates, so I “only” need to block them. Thanks though for the helpful hint on how to get rid of repeat spammers!
I have never received any response from Twitter, let alone a friendly one. From suspending to reinstating my account, it was all done wordlessly.
They may be snowed under, but what’s so difficult in targeting the proven bots and spammers FIRST before turning to the harmless people who, in Twitter’ own words, *might* or *might not* be guilty of abusing their account?
I still love using Twitter (while I can), but seeing the number of people who are complaining about the same phenomenon (not just on here…) is alarming.
Best,
Miriam
My Account was suspended on June 27 for no apparent reasons
I emailed Twitter daily since then
I didn’t violate any rule of there guidelines
the reply was only automated, or a statement saying “were working on the problem”
today i send another email and I was told that my ticket was closed
I opened another ticket, and was told it will take them 30 days to respond
I am so Mad at them
if anyone can advise any help please let me know
thanks
I have the same problem, one of my Twitter Accounts has been suspended. Bizarrely, I have two accounts, one well clear of the 2,000 limit, the other still struggling to get there, and its the lower one that they have suspended !!!!
Anyway, as a backup, you should all think about SPN Babble, I have been using this in parallel with Twitter for some time, however it also allows you to pass your micro blogs to 9 or 10 other sites, including Twitter, Plurm and others
And if you have a WordPress Blog, then you can feed automated updates from your blog into SPN Babble and then onto the other 10 micro Blog sites. Its awesome !!
Enjoy
As of late Twitter has been having problems with both denial-of-service attacks and malware (as it were) attacks. To fix the latter, Twitter has had to “suspend” accounts that are compromised by the malware. But for the first time in my recollection, Twitter is emailing suspended account holders (at least those suspended because of the malware attacks) with instructions on how to get their accounts back online.
-TimK
Hi All,
Just a FYI, maybe after the fact but for the future you can back-up your followers, people you are following and Tweets with just one click.
Why bother to do this? Many reasons:
* Twitter may lose followers again like it did in June / July
* You may change your Twitter name and want to re-follow the people you were following, and contact the people who were following you
* You may want to refer to an older Tweet – currently Twitter does not keep all of your older Tweets
* You may just like backing things up, ‘just in case’, like us 
I’m not affiliated with Twitter or these people in any way, just thought this would be good for our own personal use, and decided to make it available for the world at large too.
I use it regularly and it’s free
Chris
Oops,
Here’s the link to my last comment
http://tweetake.com/
Great post. It is so rediculous that twitter is suspending people they shouldn’t be, without providing clear rules of what you can and can’t do. The “mentions” or “reply” spam is out of control and twitter makes it hard to block these users.
My account is still suspended. I only have 5 tweets and was just getting started. So why not just create a new one.. well it was created with Cornelius3D which is my name on everything, and I would like to be able to tie it all together someday.. So what do I do now. My account has been suspended for over a month, I have sent in a few emails, gone onto the GetSatisfaction site to see what I can do, and it looks like all I can do is wait. Should I send in more emails? Do they get looked at by anything other then the computer?
My account got suspended as well (two days ago), though I violated zero of Twitter’s abuse rules. My posts have been very few, and they are just short messages about what I’m up to…Nothing vulgar, no spamming, no attacking. It’s absolutely ridiculous…
Cornelius…I am playing the waiting game too, but in the meantime, I am updating my Twitter help ticket every single day…Maybe they’ll get the point…
Cheers all…btw, my e-mail is fake on there 
I am a bit bummed that Twitter is acting so strangely.
In fact they said my account was suspended due to:
“strange activity”.
What the heck does that mean?
Twitter’s tech support has NOT gotten back to me!
In any event, guess I will have to start over!
See y’all out there!
Namaste’
Scot
Twitter always suspends the cool kids… guess that is what happens when you site is produced by geeks. Check out this guys video in response to getting suspended
http://www.youtube.com/user/honeycooler#play/uploads/3/Alz4Sklr39s
alright, i guess i’m a part of the suspended account crew!!! I didnt think it would happen to me and i tried everything in my power for it not to. But now its been about 12 hours since my account has been down. It might be time to open a new account.
My account got suspendet 2 days ago and I subimtted immediately a support ticket and explained the problem but I got no response. How long can this take?
well im here too got suspended due to strange activity, The gods at Twitter have not replied to my tickets. Think i will stay with other sites
Me too. I started following a lot more people than I have done recently. This morning my account has been suspended. Did you get it unsuspended?