It seems that tweets from people you don’t follow are appearing in some users’ Twitter streams. I noticed this morning that there were two tweets from people that I don’t follow and they were not retweeted by any of my friends. They just appeared in my stream like any regular tweet from my friends.
I did some quick searches on Google and found this note on Posterous posted yesterday and updated today. The user “aulia” in Indonesia writes about “Twittruders: Stray Tweets from people you don’t follow”:
“It seems that there is a breach of some sorts in Twitter today where stray tweets show up unexpectedly on people’s timelines. These tweets are not retweets, they’re not quoted tweets, and they’re not from people being followed. These stray tweets may not necessarily be spam. It’s entirely possible at this point that there is or was a breakdown in Twitter’s network which leaked messages into other people’s timelines.
Speaking with Peter Baxter from AVG a few weeks ago, he mentioned that the Twitter network as well as the website are very insecure and Twitter, the company, isn’t doing very well when dealing with these attacks. It’s difficult to dispute the man when the facts speak for themselves.”
Twitter has been over capacity this morning so the site does not run smoothly and I hope that there aren’t any real security issues behind these tweets that appear. I will try to monitor this story further during the day. If these stray tweets pop up in your stream too, do let me know.
Update: The Mirror in the UK also writes about the story: Twitter spills the beans: leaks private tweets
Update 2: Comment from Twitter.
Note: I’m @kullin on Twitter.
Tags: twitter, twittruders, spam, twitter. Ping.