

“Protect my tweets” doesn't - breadbox
http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2014/07/21/protect-my-tweets-doesnt/

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rjl20
I agree that it's an edge case; I disagree that it shouldn't inspire much
worry. It's not intuitive that "only those you approve" means "people whose
follower requests you have approved since you went protected, plus everyone
who was following you before then, regardless of whether you follow them
back". The three or four people I've mentioned this to in person were all
surprised by that behavior, anyway.

(Full disclosure: I'm elsewhere.org.)

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davidlumley
Because Twitter is all about broadcasting to people who follow you, I've
always understood the "only those you approve" part to mean "those people
following you that you haven't blocked".

The idea that you can get around being blocked by temporarily deactivating
your account is interesting though and feels like it could be easily abused in
this way.

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baddox
The edge case is that A follows B, then A deactivates his account, then B
switches her account to protected, then A deactivates account (within the 30
day window since deactivation). Now A is a bonafide follower of B (because he
followed her before she switched to protected) and can thus view B's protected
tweets.

I don't disagree that Twitter might as well patch up this corner case, but I
think it's an extremely narrow corner case that shouldn't inspire much worry
or outrage.

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namnatulco
This seems like intended behavior -- the assumption on Twitter's part is that
when you're setting your account to protected, you're also going to clean out
the list of followers you have. I guess it'd be an improvement if Twitter
added a notice, but I don't see what else they can do -- I doubt you'd want to
tell all your followers to re-follow you.

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mikeleeorg
The rule that's always served me well is, "Don't publish anything on the
Internet that you wouldn't want on a billboard."

This includes sites that are supposed to be private, like online email
providers, and especially social networks. I'm friendly with enough brilliant
hackers to know better than that.

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breadbox
That may be good advice for people who are considering whether or not to
publish something. That's not a good attitude for a social networking service
to take, nor should it let Twitter off the hook for being clear about the
limitations of their platform.

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mikeleeorg
That should go without saying. But even with all the security measures in the
world, it's still prudent for a user not to publish without thinking about
issues like this.

