Chris Hamady

Over the past few weeks with increasingly more regularity, my Twitter account has been locked when I try to access it. When I attempt to log in, I get the message:

"Locked out!
We've temporarily locked your account after too many failed attempts to sign in. Please chillax for a few, then try again."

I know my login information and have it saved in my web browser, so what could possibly be causing this? I believe that the answer lies in the ever increasing amount of Twitter accounts that are being hacked and exploited for spamming.

Could people be attempting to hack into accounts using brute-force hacking methods? I'm sure it's possible, and probable.

Twitter's answer to this issue, however, is extremely vexing. Because someone is trying to hack into "my" account, Twitter locks ME out of it!? Um...is this really the best solution to this problem?</sarcasm>

Why not use IP address restrictions instead of globally locking down the account. If someone types 3 bad login attempts from an IP address, refuse all login attempts from that IP address UNLESS that IP address has been used in the past to successfully log in. In that case, make it 5 unsuccessful log in attempts before that IP address is locked out. How about allowing users to force Twitter to ONLY allow logins from specific IP addresses?

Don't like these ideas as default settings? How about making them an optional checkbox in the Twitter settings?

[  ] Use IP address login restrictions.

[  ] Only allow logins from the following IP addresses

etc...

All I know is, getting locked out of my Twitter account when I'm increasingly relying on it for communication and learning is a real pain.

Could someone be silenced for their views on Twitter? Absolutely. All someone has to do is try to log into an account over and over again and that user is locked out of it. This doesn't seem very functional, dependable, or even usable.

Twitter is many things to many people. If they want many of us to rely on it for professional social networking, IMHO they need to make it more robust, consistent, and designed with mission critical uptime, connectivity, and "loginability" in mind. (Ok...loginability isn't a word. Put the word or phrase that I'm looking for in the comments.) :)

I hope Twitter fixes these login restrictions real soon.

CH