INTERNET Twitter Japan blog post says company leaked no user data

May 10, 2012 05:50 am | IDG News Service

The post comes after some 59,000 login and password combinations from user accounts were posted online

by Jay Alabaster

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None of the recently leaked Twitter logins and passwords came from within the company, according to a message posted on Twitter's Japanese blog Thursday.

"We have confirmed that no one's information has been leaked from Twitter," the blog said, after apologizing to users for their concerns.

The comments came after 58,978 login and password combinations were published Monday to Pastebin, a website designed to share programming code but often used by hackers to show off stolen information. The company had already said that much of the account information posted was duplicates, unmatched login credentials and spam accounts.

In its Japanese blog posting, Twitter said that account information had likely been leaked from a different site, and it had sent password reset requests to users on the list.

It also warned users to avoid "fishing" Web sites, which try to con login information out of unwary surfers, and to use strong passwords that are unique for separate sites.

In the days since the leak became public, security analysts and hackers had questioned how legitimate the list was, as many of the users on it had few followers and there were no well-known figures on the list.

Still, the issue is a touchy one for Twitter, as it is working under a deal with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to protect user privacy. The deal was made after the site suffered hacks in 2009 that left prominent Tweeters such as President Obama with no control over their accounts.