Hacker News Reader

Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

> safety and security purposes

I tried making a Twitter two months ago because I was having trouble with my phone and needed to access T-Mobile's social media-only support team.

Within five minutes of making the account, I was banned for "suspicious activity" and required to enter my phone number "for security purposes". But the only reason I made the account is because my phone wasn't working...

Emailed support and was told that they could not make an exception for me because I had broken some vague unnamed rule. Then I said the magic words, "This is clearly a ploy to collect phone numbers for data aggregation purposes," and within the next 24 hours my account was unlocked, accompanied by a very salty and accusatory email.

View on HN

Twitter isn't alone in this sort of invasive activity.

I have family and friends that share photos on their private Instagram accounts and nowhere else. I didn't have an account, so I installed the app on my phone, signed up, verified email and mobile number, and followed the family accounts.

The next day I open the app only to be prompted to log in again, which it won't accept (password stored in a password manager). A few minutes later an email arrives from Instagram saying that my account has been locked due to suspicious activity and demanding that I provide a photo of myself holding government issued ID. Their helpdesk refuses to do anything until I do.

Microsoft does the same with their accounts.

Used a couple of throw-aways to get kids log into some gaming MS service. In two days arrives a message saying your account was compromised and used for spamming, we need a phone # to make it great again. The kicker - throw-aways were on my own domain and my own mail server.

Fucking morons, they don't even bother to lie convincingly.

After the whole Blizzard and Hong Kong incident yesterday, I tried to delete my Blizzard account. Despite having never submitted a copy of my ID, they're now asking for one to verify that this is indeed me.

I keep wondering, how will they be able to verify? I didn't use my real name, I used a throwaway email address. So why do they need my ID? I could submitted any ID I want, they still wouldn't know it's me. This to me just sounds like a ploy to gather government issued information, to delete my account from a stupid game...

During log in, they already verified I own the email, by allowing me to sign in with password and email, and then input a code send to said email address.

This is ridiculous. So government ID required to delete your account, but if you start spamming offensive messages in the chat, you'll likely get it banned very quickly.

I wonder what they'd do if you sent them a clearly fake image of a passport or a driving license, with some swear words in name fields. I wouldn't be surprised if they banned the account. Or what if you put "Sir General Data Protection-Regulation" as your name?

Did you ever buy anything on their platform?

If so, is it possible they have access to your name via your past money transactions?

Don't think I ever bought anything, think I only used it for Hearthstone.

What the heck happened to our parents' advice of "never reveal your personal information online"? I was being force-fed this lie since birth?

Why do they suddenly not care anymore? My mom constantly calls me paranoid now for not wanting to do things like upload all of my photos to Google cloud.

Back then it was new and potentially dangerous, so they wanted to protect you as a kid. Today, it's just convenient, so why can't you just upload photos of all your kids to Google and share the album with them?

I.e. their position back then was as ungrounded as their current position is.

Facebook has done this to me multiple times as well. However i think my activity could very well be considered suspicious: I signed up with a fake name and gave no other information, then followed a load of people.

I'm not sure I like the trend of these sites trying to collect identity information. They might justify it with spam/scam/fraud protection, but they don't really have an ethical reason to do so.

Instagram is amusing. You can remove an email address from your account. And its still valid for logins many weeks after the fact.

Yup, this just happened to me too.

I'm sort of amazed your account was unlocked instead of you just being shown the door. Especially since, as a company policy, letting users like you through is likely to result in very little revenue for users. They're much better off just targeting the tech illiterate folk who can be easily swayed into clicking through ads.

Twitter has put some effort into the "customer service" use case. https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2016/04/30/how-to-use...

At a basic level, you could think of it as providing the content for the audience - the inventory that is sold to advertisers. Twitter as we know it would not exist if all the users were tweet consumers, and none were tweet producers.

T-Mobile is great example of a business providing customer service over Twitter.

I tried making a new account two or three months ago. Twitter sent me a verification email, which I confirmed, but they immediately requested phone verification as well - even though I had never been able to use the account in any way. I refused and never opened an account because of that.

The sceptic in me thinks this is more about advertising and less about security.

>Within five minutes of making the account, I was banned for "suspicious activity" and required to enter my phone number "for security purposes".

The same was done to me. The thought that the point of this was not to take my phone number for advertising never occured to me. It seemed very obvioius and I hope the EU, as the only political actor that sometimes seems to care about people, will do something about this.

> Then I said the magic words, "This is clearly a ploy to collect phone numbers for data aggregation purposes," and within the next 24 hours my account was unlocked, accompanied by a very salty and accusatory email.

Do you think this would still work?

I've been wanting to get a twitter but I've been put off by the phone number "requirement" for a long time. Every time I attempt to make an account or log into an old one it requires phone number verification. (I can't get burner phones where I am).

This happened to me only two months ago, I assume it's still a possibility. Ask them if they like the idea of you constantly making new alt accounts until one finally gets through.

> accompanied by a very salty and accusatory email

Would you mind sharing the anonymized content of said email?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199808

I don't have a Twitter account and I agree that Twitter (and all the other platforms) use misleading tactics to collect data on their users. To play devils advocate though, Twitter genuinely has a problem with troll accounts don't they? Adding a phone number requirement could reduce the amount. I have the impression that some people are holding Twitter accountable for the way their platform is affecting public discourse, this could be primarily a tactic to curb fake accounts.

This seems like a dark pattern; requiring the use of an external life invasion platform to access actually decent tech support.

I tried asking T-Force if we could continue the conversation over email, but they misunderstood or something and sent me an account validation form via email but then just continued the conversation over Twitter. I'm not sure if they have been given an avenue for support outside of Facebook and Twitter.

I have changed my phone to opt-in only by setting it to "do not disturb" mode permanently. If you're not in my contact list, my phone doesn't ring and you can only leave a message. It's mostly great. I may try the Call Screen feature I noticed the other day as an alternative too.

I wonder if requiring a phone number for access could create ADA compliance liability for web services.

> accompanied by a very salty and accusatory email.

post the email

" Hello,

Your account was locked due to a violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules), specifically our rules around abuse: https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169997.

Your account is now restored. Please note that further violations may result in the locking of your account again or permanent account suspension.

Thank you,

Twitter"

They refused to take responsibility for the error.

That doesn't sound salty coming from an automated system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com