Twitter says leaked passwords mostly inaccurate or for suspended spammers
58,978 login and password combinations appeared on Pastebin earlier this week
By Jeremy Kirk | Published: 10:30, 09 May 2012
Twitter logins and passwords leaked on the web this week are mostly inaccurate or belong to accounts already suspended for spamming, the company said last night.
The logins and passwords were published on May 7 on Pastebin, a website intended for programmers to share code but favoured by hackers to release stolen data. The data was published on five separate posts on Pastebin, comprising a total of 58,978 login and password combinations.
"We've discovered that the list of alleged accounts and passwords found on Pastebin consists of more than 20,000 duplicates, many spam accounts that have already been suspended and many login credentials that do not appear to be linked," Twitter said. "The password and username are not actually associated with each other."
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Some users will be asked to reset their passwords, while other users who are worried their data may be compromised are encouraged to change their passwords, the spokesman said.
The data was posted by an anonymous Pastebin user. As of Wednesday afternoon, the first page of the information had more than 250,000 views.
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