UPDATE: The solution is to send go to Twitter.com and request a password change. I was back in immediately after doing this. :) It can take a while to filter through to external clients (like TweetDeck). Thanks for everybody’s help!

Earlier today Twitter was hit by StalkDaily, a website that infected any Twitter visitor with a hack that made your account auto-tweet recommendations. Click here to read more, and to find out if you were infected.

I posted my suggested cure, which involved changing your password, which I did, to this website at 1.28pm GMT. It got re-tweeted well and generated a bit of interest.

I went to the cinema at 3pm, and when I came out, I could no longer login to my Twitter account.

My profile is still there, so I’ve not been suspended by mistake or anything else, so it’s not that. But when I got home and tried to login again, I finally got to see the problem: I’ve been locked out.

Twitter has ‘temporarily locked your account after too many failed attempts to sign in’.

Now, it’s true that after the first time I couldn’t access Twitter on my phone I tried several times to get back in (using several different clients, as well as Twitter.com), so I clocked up a few of those re-tries myself. But I was locked out the very first time, too, which got me thinking: was StalkDaily just one big phishing operation?

Either way, I can’t access my account. Twitter has told me to ‘chillax’, but that’s easier said than done when you have no idea when the lock will be lifted. And if StalkDaily or their representatives tried to hit my account hundreds or thousands of times using the old password, Twitter might keep the lock going for a very indefinite period.

What really sucks is I can’t raise a help ticket on Twitter support – as you need to login to do that.

So, what to do, what to do? No idea. I’m out with friends tonight, but will be checking back in from time to time. Meantime, if somebody wants to raise a ticket for me (account: @Sheamus) or send a message to @Twitter to have a look at this, that would be great.

Much obliged. And I’ll see you when I see you. Meantime, if you were hit by StalkDaily today and are able to access your Twitter account or locked out like me, please hit the comments. Thanks! :)

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