Twitter bug lets users fake followers

SAN JOSE, USA: Micro-blogging site Twitter was bitten by a bug on Monday that allowed users to force other users to follow them. As a side effect of this, the users of Twitter temporarily lost the list of followers of their accounts.

“We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to 'force' other users to follow them,” Twitter said. It is now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place.

The flaw allowed users to add anyone else as a follower of their tweets. Normally, the other person has to initiate such “following”.

Twitter recommended its users, who were fraudulently added as a follower to someone else's account, to click "unfollow" to take themselves off those lists. It is still not clear as to how long the glitch existed and how many people took advantage of it. Twitter said it is looking at the issue.

The details of the bug was published by technology blog Gizmodo, which explained how Twitter users could force any other user to follow their account. “Follow this dead-simple guide to force any Twitter user - from Oprah (Winfrey) to (Ashton) Kutcher - to follow you. No, seriously,” said Gizmodo.com.

Launched in 2007, Twitter now has more than 100 million users.

(As a reader, do you think such glitches will affect the future of the micro-blogging site? What would you do if you found yourself to be a forced follower of someone you do not like or want to follow? Please give your comments in the box below.)