Twitter And Disappearing Internet Browsers [solved]

Hi.


So rather than posting a different thread for each of the problems I'm having, I've decided to inquire about both of my problems in one thread.


First problem: Can anybody that uses twitter give me some insight?


I've already lost 4 twitter accounts because of the same problem. They keep getting suspended because I "follow users aggressively". The first twitter I lost, I had no idea what they meant by that, so I said OK, it's best not to follow users until they follow you first.

By my second twitter, a user followed me, I followed them back and I instantly got suspended for it.


Third twitter? Same thing.

And now the 4th twitter? I don't even know the reason because this time I abstained from following anyone at all. Seriously, I held back even from following people back. It's like, OK, twitter doesn't want users to follow anyone apparently. What in the world? Do they want our timelines to be empty? What's the use of having a twitter at all if we can't follow anyone? I'm totally lost.


And I suspect I lost my 4th twitter because of something I tweeted, but the problem is they only go into specifics when one follows users aggressively according to them. Then they make you sign a promissory note (I don't know what else to call that) saying you won't follow users aggressively anymore, and then they unsuspend you but they take your followers and following away but the people's tweets stay in your timeline. I don't know what else to do. Does this mean new twitter users won't be able to follow anyone? If so what's the point? Why doesn't twitter just keep new users from signing up?


My other problem


The internet browsers I install on my computer keep disappearing! They appear in the Add/Remove programs list but they don't appear anywhere else on the computer. I try to use the search function to see if I can right click on the program when it finds it and the search function doesn't work at all. About a half an hour ago I had to find Safari on my Add/Remove programs and reinstall it just so it could open. This new browser Torch, the same thing. As soon as I installed Safari, it disappeared. I had to find it in the same place to open it, and it seems like I'm going to have to leave these browsers open all the time just so I can use them! I can't access them any other way! The only other two browsers I can use are Opera and Firefox. Internet Explorer 8 went to hell too. When I click on it, it opens, but then it closes in a lightning flash. What the heck is going on with my computer? Is my whole hard drive corrupted or just the Operating System? I was going to install Ubuntu, but if I'm still going to have these problems while using Ubuntu, then there's no use. I'm going to have to throw this computer out and borrow another one from somebody while I get my new one, because seriously, I am sick and tired. I don't know what happened to this machine when I installed the new Windows XP updates 3 weeks ago. It was working perfect until then. Seriously, Windows XP should just disappear from the planet.


Can anybody offer some help?

Thanks
KH

Maryn said:

Twitter itself defines Aggressive Following as "indiscriminately following hundreds of accounts just to garner attention."

I assume Twitter's own management software detects this when a user starts following large numbers of people. Only they can explain their actions with suspending your account, of course. I'm making educated guesses at best, that you identified some group and started following a bunch of people in it.

So after losing three accounts to that, you then tweeted something which was inappropriate and lost a fourth account? If you ever get back in Twitter's good graces, you owe it to yourself to read their rules and make sure you understand them, and follow them to the letter, because you are on their radar as a troublesome user.

I'm not adept at identifying or fixing software issues, but those who are are going to ask what operating system you have, as well as what antivirus, antimalware, and firewall you are using, and when you last did a complete scan.

While you wait for the more knowlegable people to arrive, I urge you to make sure your antivirus and other security software is up to date, then to run a fresh scan, including hidden files.

Maryn, sad there's no more coffee

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My first three twitters were suspended for 'following aggressively', and the fourth one was suspended for me trying to participate in a worldwide twitter trend. Every tweet I sent had the phrase of the twitter trend. Like suppose we were trying to trend #Happy50thAnniversaryGeneralHospital. That's too long for a real trend, but still, it's an example. I sent five tweets with the same hashtag and immediately after my account got suspended. Yet I saw other users doing the same thing and nothing happened to them. I was just trying to ask around to see if anyone else was having the same issue, and lo and behold, one of the users I'm replying to, whom I will reply to below, has the same problem. I thought I was the only one.

veinglory said:

Perhaps your other accounts were banned based on an IP match to the first one? So you are banned as a user, not an account? Or the are using a harsher standard. Because I know new users who are following bunches of people with no issue

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I considered that possibility when my 2nd twitter got suspended, but I read in the FAQ section the following question: (i'm paraphrasing)

"Why won't twitter just block the IP's of troublesome users?"

And again, paraphrased, the answer was:

"We can't block IP's because blocking a single IP will prevent thousands of users from accessing twitter". I thought 1 IP was limited to one person or one network, like suppose one had a home network and their wifi had the same IP for all 5-10 computers in the house. That left me even more startled because I thought I would have to get a new internet connection or a new computer to be able to get into twitter.

EMaree said:

a) In your first account, how many people did you follow in your first few days? As Maryn said, that suspension usually only kicks in if you're following hundreds at once.

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I followed 15 people that weren't following me and would never (celebrities) and then I followed 20 more people that followed me first, I followed them back. The first 15 people I followed were suggestions from twitter. They will not let you tweet or do anything with your account until you follow at least 15 people. They say 'start by following 5'. You do so and they say, 'good'. When you go to the next screen, they say 'follow 5 more', they say, 'great!' and then they suggest you try to find people within your email contacts that might be on twitter to follow. Since no one in my email inbox has twitter, (because I've actually tried to do that) I have to look for people by name. When I'm done following 5 random people, not within the suggestions for me to just push the follow button, that's when they nag me to verify my email address with my account and move forward. Then 20 more people followed me and I followed them back. Got suspended.

b) Are you using any third-party software with Twitter, e.g. to find friends to follow? If so, avoid it.

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No.

c) Did each account have a different, secure password? Make sure scammers and rogue third-party applications can't run off with your account and misuse it.

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Yes, each account have a different and secure password. For every website I make an account for the password is different. I have a piece of paper next to my computer with the passwords to all my internet accounts.

Sounds like your PCs been hit hard by a virus, at a guess -- the software is behaving in an extremely unstable way.

Run some reputable virus scans (e.g. Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast!, and personally I like to pair my antivirus with Malwarebytes for an extra level of security.)

If that doesn't work, consider reinstalling Windows. Ideally, consider upgrading to Windows 7, which I'm going to bring up below...

Don't shoot the messenger! WinXP is a stable build usually, but it's not supported by Microsoft anymore. It has, technically, already disappeared from the planet -- Microsoft encourage everyone using it to upgrade. Using it puts you at serious risk of security issues.

Have you considered upgrading to Windows 7?

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Yeah, my operating system is messed up. It's been that way for weeks. It happened after the last Windows Update I performed. When I go around and look for Windows 7, the last time I checked for a copy of one was on amazon and I only found the upgrade, which I don't know will work if I install it. I'm thinking in order for me to use it I have to have Windows 7 already installed on the machine, which I have XP. It costs $95.00 but I don't know what it will do when I try to use it. I don't want to mess up my computer more than it already is and wind up wasting money that I could put toward a utility bill.

mercs said:

I got the "aggressive following" warning before. I was following 18 people...12 of them were west end ticket companies, 5 were authors and 1 was a football club! isn't that the point of twitter???

I had to sign a disclaimer to say I wouldn't do it again and they have allowed my account to be unblocked, but seriously??? I added the first west end one and THEY SUGGESTED the remainder!

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I'm glad to know I'm not the only person that's been going through this. I hope someone will be able to help you with this, too.

Torgo said:

If Twitter thinks you may be 'aggressively following' people, and you haven't been, then maybe your twitter account has been hacked and a bot is following people on your behalf. If you've lost 3 accounts to that, then it's possible that the problem isn't password security but something even more sinister: you have a keylogger or a trojan of some kind that's just sitting in your browser harvesting your password each time you set up a new account.

But then you say that your timelines were empty, so I am scratching my head.

Basically, I'd say ditch Windows XP. It's not secure any more, and Windows 7 is much better. You can get a Home Edition key for about fifty quid these days I think.

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Exactly. Like if they don't want us following anyone, (just because we're new, is my guess) then what's the point? If only users that have had their twitters for a while, can follow users freely, and new users can't, why sign up for twitter in the first place? I've been checking my following number and it doesn't change unless I go to someone's profile and follow them, so I don't know.


Thanks for the help. I've been waiting for more suggestions. Goodness gracious, this post reads like a manuscript.

Krystal.

bearilou said:

huh?

I have a 'private' (not really private because twitter isn't exactly private) separate twitter account that has me following three people and followed by two. I can twitter just fine and haven't found the functionality hampered by it.

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Maybe when you made your twitter, twitter wasn't the way it is now. Now, it lets you follow practically no one. I guess this new policy went into effect 1 week ago because that's when I started having this problem. It's crazy.

Maryn said:

I'm still waiting to hear you've done a complete scan of your computer using decent antivirus software, and what the result was.

Maryn, checking in

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I have Microsoft Security Essentials, but I'm not sure it's working properly because it's in green, no warnings, no nags to update anything, and these weird things are still happening to me.

Reziac said:

Also, it's quite possible that the latest WinXP updates are incompatible with your machine, most likely because of older drivers. That can cause all manner of instability. Try doing a Restore back to before the updates and see if that fixes it.

BTW the notion that because something is no longer "supported" or updated, it's now NFG and you'll be invaded by every piece of malware on the planet, is pretty bogus. The malware world moves on to whatever is popular, it doesn't concentrate on the old and obscure (cuz there's no money in that, and malware now is mostly about money). Win95 is "no longer supported" and hasn't been updated in over a decade, but try infecting it with a Win7-era virus. It won't work. Between common sense (don't click every link in sight or let your email run scripts) and ordinary precautions (firewall, antivirus) pretty much any OS can be secure, regardless of age and origin.

As to Twitter, doubtless they have scripts to detect "bad" users, and said scripts aren't very well crafted. Considering that they allow all manner of account squatting (just about every domain name has a matching Twitter squatter) one wonders why they concentrate on trivial policing.

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I tried doing system restores, all the way up to Mar 1, 2013, when everything couldn't have been more perfect, but the computer stayed the same. Programs continued to disappear and act weird, so I don't know.

Pammie Simon said:

You may want to go here and just ask: https://twitter.com/about/contact.

Maybe it's because I signed up for twitter ages ago, but when I first made mine it suggested I find people to follow, but didn't guide me through choosing any specific amount.

Also I agree with people saying that it's probably a virus. Up until only a few months ago my entire company was still using Windows XP and our systems worked just fine.

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Now it doesn't let you do anything with your twitter until you follow 15 people when you first start. It completely blocks you from your timeline and from tweeting anything until you follow 5 people. You start with 5, and when you think you're done, they force you to follow 5 more. Then they force you to search people to follow by name. I don't know. I hate the new twitter, and the way they're not letting me follow whoever I want to, that's also freaking annoying.

Maryn said:

I'm on XP and so is my husband, at our home desktops. (Laptops and work are newer systems.) We have no issues with it despite its being unsupported. I don't believe XP is the problem.

I think the OP has a trojan or other malware and needs to acquire or update and run a good antivirus program. Krystal, if you don't know how to do that, don't just sit there cursing the fates. Ask. The odds are good there's nothing wrong with the physical computer, but that you've allowed bad software to be installed. We'd like to help you get it un-installed.

Maryn, who once reformatted her hard drive with only a little help

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Medievalist said:

Krystal you've got malware.

Until you completely remove it, you're going to keep getting reinfected.

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Would you guys recommend another security program? MSE is obviously not working.

Maryn said:

I ask, politely, for the third time.

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I find myself unable to respond to that particular statement.


To answer your questions, no, I hadn't run a scan, because I thought when something intruded your computer it would pick it up immediately and block it. I didn't think I'd have to run a scan to pick up viruses. I figured if it doesn't pick them up at the moment they come in, then it won't pick them up no matter how many scans I've done. It's weird because I'd had MSE on other computers (that ran Windows 7) and every time something unwanted would come in, MSE would pick it up and ask me what course of action to take. Even when I started using this crappy Windows XP system last year, nothing would come in, and my computer would be perfect despite its faulty and unsupported OS, and I never had any problems up until now. Now it turns out that this Trojan horse or whatever it is I have on my computer is so clever that it renders my antimalware system totally helpless against malware. I bet you guys anything when this FULL scan is over, it'll find nothing, because there is indeed such a thing as malware that's undetectable unless one actually spends money on a paid security suite for the computer, and some malware is so clever that even paid security suites can't pick it up while they keep destroying the computer.

I'll just figure this out on my own. Maryn's starting to get annoyed and it's never my intention to deliberately annoy anyone, so I'll mark this query as solved, even though my problem is not solved because this bug is eating my computer from the inside out slowly. My sincere apologies if I annoyed anyone.

A friend is going to lend me his copy of Windows XP for me to get by while I get my new mini. So problem's now solved.

Maryn said:

Does that mean you still have not run a scan? If so, then you are aiding in the continuation of your computer problems. It makes no sense to me that you are ignoring advice that may solve a problem.

In which case, I hope you're enjoying it, because it's not going to resolve without your doing something. It sounds to me like you are readying yourself to give up a computer which could be restored to normal working condition with years of utility remaining because you are not willing to address the fact that you have a virus and need to act to get rid of it.

Maryn

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I am running a scan right now. It's been running for 3 hours and it still hasn't found anything. this is hopeless. But like I already said before you replied, I'm just getting a well-working copy of Windows XP.

Reziac said:

Brand new viruses sometimes won't be detected by anything, because there's nothing that can be matched with a known or possible threat. And antivirus apps are always kinda caught between being too aggressive (in which case any program that can write or alter anything gets nailed -- CD-writing apps and older DOS utilities used to regularly get flagged as "viruses"!) and not aggressive enough (in which case the near-misses slip through). Sometimes how a new virus is caught and identified is someone chasing down little anomalies by hand. (I've done that twice myself.)

Anyway <rereading original post>, by disappearing browsers -- do you mean the desktop icons disappear? they disappear from Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs?

There are some older viruses that "vanish" stuff like that, tho I don't recall anything else offhand.

I'm wondering, tho... if this is an older computer, what filesystem is the hard disk? Is it FAT32 or NTFS? if it's FAT32, is the partition larger than 32GB? (there's a bug in FAT32 that disappears files on partitions over 32GB.)

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I don't know anything about FAT32 or NTFS, but I do know that although a little old, this computer is not that old. It was made in late 2009, purchased in 2010, and I guess the original owner of the computer got tired of it and then her grandmother put it away until she found my aunt to give it to, and then since nobody liked minis in this house, and I was needy of a computer because mine had just gotten stolen, well, she gave this one to me in early 2012. It's just now that I am starting to have problems.


No, they don't just disappear from the desktop. They appear only in the Add/Remove programs utility and from there, they have to be re-installed. I search for them in the 'all programs' function in the start menu and the folders of those programs are empty. Just gone. This is the weirdest thing that I've gone through with a computer, and I've owned 9 different computers, including this one. Others would break due to hard drive failure or the power source would get burned out destroying the machines. People in my house had a custom of plugging in appliances in the multi-outlet that my computer peripherals were plugged into that they weren't supposed to, and doing that for over a year? Yeah, that will burn anything from the inside out. I lost 2 computers like that, my first and my em...third. But this Trojan horse is slowly eating my computer. Oh, and the other programs? I can't open them just by double-clicking them. I have to find the icon of the program on the desktop, right-click, and click 'open'. My normally almost-empty desktop that has one or two icons on it, like the recycle bin and the internet browser, meaning Chrome, Safari, etc, is now inundated with icons of the programs I use. You can't even see my wallpaper anymore. But my friend is going to loan me her copy of Windows XP tomorrow. All of her computers have Windows 7 on it, and they have that function of doing system recoveries if the OS gets corrupted, so I doubt she's going to need it anyway. The problem should be solved by tomorrow.

mercs said:

Good advise being shared here, but to clarify a point raise earlier, my first thought was a spambot hack, but nope 18 followers in one go is considered "aggressive". Maybe they have to draw the line somewhere and I was just a bit unlucky -I can imagine a lot of sports fans falling foul otherwise as they type in their entire premier league sticker album to follow!

But if I'm honest with you, I am not a fan of twitter. I had an account with 200+ followers before, but nothing led to anything. I set up a new one and going to try it again (and not make things so cluttered), but just not a fan of THAT sort of posting. Prefer chat forums like this...

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My friend, who's had her twitter for over 4 years, has told me that this is only happening to new twitter accounts. I'd had another account I'd forgotten about that I'd made back in February, and on that account I noticed I can follow anyone I want. On that account, just to experiment, I literally followed 50 people in one day. It didn't get suspended. It's my new account that has that restriction. So yeah. New Twitter users are going to go through hell with twitter, and in order to get more users, twitter might have to change that regulation in their TOS.