After mistakenly resetting the passwords of a large number of accounts, Twitter sent out emails to scores of users today. Now, Twitter wasn't hacked. Like most Internet companies, the San Francisco-based social media darling often resets passwords as a safety precaution for accounts that look iffy. But today they reset too many, thus the email. Here's an example of the missive you might have found in your inbox today (name, URL removed for security purposes):

Mild panic and paranoia ensued, most notably in China where it was around noontime when the emails went out. Beijing-based analyst Patrick Chovanec sent out the following tweet after receiving an email, "Wow, my Twitter account just got hacked. Party Congresses are such fun."

People continue to air their concern as demonstrated here. Twitter, however, soon cleared up the very minor snafu by releasing the following statement:

We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community. As part of that commitment, in instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.

As always, we recommend that people review these tips on how to keep their Twitter accounts secure: [link]

[WSJ]