Keeping your Twitter account safe

Thursday, 8 May 2014

We know some of you occasionally have difficulty accessing your Twitter account, and whatever the circumstances may be, we want you to be able to get back into it quickly and securely. So today we’re starting to roll out two improvements that will help protect your account and restore access: one, a streamlined password reset experience; and two, better identification and blocking of suspicious logins.

Losing or forgetting your Twitter password can be a frustrating experience. We’ve redesigned the password reset process to make it easier to get back into your account.

The new process lets you choose the email address or phone number associated with your account where you’d like us to send your reset information. That way, whether you’ve recently changed your phone number, or are traveling with limited access to your devices, or had an old email address connected to your Twitter account, you’ve got options. We’ve also made it easier to reset a lost password on your iOS or Android device and have added some customized tips to help you strengthen your account security in the future.

Keeping your Twitter account safe

While we always encourage you to follow these best practices for password security, we’re aware that many people reuse the same passwords across multiple sites. And when any of these sites are compromised, stolen passwords could be used to access your account on Twitter. To protect your account in this scenario we built a system that analyzes login attempts on your account — by looking at things like location, device being used and login history — and identifies suspicious behavior.

If we identify a login attempt as suspicious, we’ll ask you a simple question about your account — something that only you know — to verify that your account is secure before granting access. We’ll also send you an email to let you know that we’ve detected unusual activity so you can update your password if need be.

Keeping your Twitter account safe

Your Twitter account is important to you, and your account security is important to us. We will continue to work on bolstering Twitter account security so you can keep enjoying Twitter safely.