On Thursday, numerous Twitter users received an email saying that their Twitter accounts may have been compromised and that their passwords had been reset as a precautionary measure to prevent unauthorized access. These users found that the email was genuine, as their passwords were not accepted the next time they attempted to log into the micro-blogging service. However, many of the password resets weren't actually triggered by a hacker attack; they were, say Twitter, "unintentionally" done.

The company said that it did suspect that several accounts had been compromised, but that during the execution of their routine security processes "a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised" were also reset. Twitter has not disclosed how many passwords were reset in total, however, according to the BBC News web site, the blunder affected thousands of users; usually, the company's response is justified. Even while the unintentional password reset mails were being sent out, intruders hacked the Twitter account belonging to the TechCrunch news site to send spam links out to the account's almost 2.5 million followers.