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by VvR-Ox 2420 days ago
What about Twitter?

I just created an account with an email but after few minutes of clicking around it locked me out. I can only use it again if I give them my phone number, too -.-

As if this wasn't enough of their invasive procedures my profile officially says "Account is blocked because of suspicious behavior".

This is some advanced trickery to fool users into giving them more data than they intended to do when creating a profile and it sucks.

There are more examples: Have you tried browsing Facebook or Xing as a user? It's all a really crappy experience.
2 comments
ben0x539 2420 days ago
fwiw, this has happened to me a few times with fresh twitter accounts. In my experience, if you care enough and have the time, you will probably be able to get support to unblock your account without handing over your phone number.

I'm not saying this to defend twitter, this is definitely some aggressive, disingenuous behavior.

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VvR-Ox 2419 days ago
I just wrote a message to support and I will keep you posted about any updates.

Just to be sure I also ordered a free SIM card so I have a spam phone for these kinds of services.

Thank you for the advice.

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VvR-Ox 2418 days ago
As expected they did not give me the answer I was asking for:

"If you need to reset your Twitter password, please request a new one here: https://twitter.com/account/begin_password_reset.

If your Twitter account is suspended or locked and you are unable to access it, please log in to your account and use the following form to get in touch with us: https://support.twitter.com/forms/general?subtopic=suspended...

Because my account is "temporarily restricted" neither of the cases matches so I think this is their kind way telling me to f-ck off or give them what they want. I don't like these kind of games and I'm thinking about not using their service after all.

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r721 2420 days ago
I think Twitter does that for some email services, definitely saw that behaviour with ProtonMail and Tutanota, Gmail was safe to use then (a couple of years ago, when I wanted to create a secondary account).
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VvR-Ox 2419 days ago
Ok as my domain is newly registered that could be a valid reason probably.

It's a TLD and no service like ProtonMail. Gmail would be the next party I don't want to share information with - I know those are complicated preferences from a "normal" point of view but I don't like to spread my data too much.

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