SnopesOur Snopes account was hacked on X (formerly twitter) and we got locked out for six weeks. We finally just got it back!
See the full story in the comments below for what we had to do to get someone/anyone at X to help us.
From Snopes CEO
1/8
On Jan 31st, one of our employees said they couldn’t log in to our Snopes X account. I checked our site email and noticed that a minute earlier, we received an email from X saying someone new logged into our Snopes account. I didn’t recognize the location and then I saw another email that came directly after saying “X two-factor authentication is good to go”.
That’s when panic set in.
2/8
I immediately reset the password with the “forgot password” link but we were still locked out as I couldn’t login without the two-factor authenticator. Thankfully no one ever posted as Snopes so I’m guessing that resetting the password also kicked out the hacker as they didn’t get a chance to change the email and phone number.
I immediately reset the password with the “forgot password” link but we were still locked out as I couldn’t login without the two-factor authenticator. Thankfully no one ever posted as Snopes so I’m guessing that resetting the password also kicked out the hacker as they didn’t get a chance to change the email and phone number.
3/8
I reached out to X help support many times over the last 6 weeks with no response. I tried the form saying we were hacked and the form saying we were having trouble with our two-factor authentication. No help.
I reached out to X help support many times over the last 6 weeks with no response. I tried the form saying we were hacked and the form saying we were having trouble with our two-factor authentication. No help.
4/8
I tried paying for the $1,000/month X Verified Org plan (even though Snopes already had this for free) to get Priority Support. After submitting payment I clicked “Contact us” and there was a special email to contact. Finally, a way to talk to someone at X! Nope. I received an auto responder a couple minutes later saying “This email address has ben deprecated” (with the “been” typo). It then directed me back to the help center I’ve been trying to get help from for 6 weeks.
I tried paying for the $1,000/month X Verified Org plan (even though Snopes already had this for free) to get Priority Support. After submitting payment I clicked “Contact us” and there was a special email to contact. Finally, a way to talk to someone at X! Nope. I received an auto responder a couple minutes later saying “This email address has ben deprecated” (with the “been” typo). It then directed me back to the help center I’ve been trying to get help from for 6 weeks.
5/8
I tried adding dozens of people on LinkedIn that say they work at X. Four of them accepted the invite and zero of them responded when I asked for help of who I can talk to at the company. I then tried signing up for linkedIn Premium to send more messages to X’ employees but again no responses from anyone.
I tried adding dozens of people on LinkedIn that say they work at X. Four of them accepted the invite and zero of them responded when I asked for help of who I can talk to at the company. I then tried signing up for linkedIn Premium to send more messages to X’ employees but again no responses from anyone.
6/8
I asked Grok what we should do but we already tried all of the suggestions.
I asked Grok what we should do but we already tried all of the suggestions.
7/8
Finally, I went back to Grok and asked if there were any other well known employees at X. Of course, it listed Elon and Linda, but they both have PM’s disabled. And then it listed John Stoll, X’s new head of news. I thought, of anyone, the head of news would be the most likely to help us, so this felt promising. I sent him a PM on X from my personal account and in less than 2 minutes he responded and said he would take care of it.
Finally, I went back to Grok and asked if there were any other well known employees at X. Of course, it listed Elon and Linda, but they both have PM’s disabled. And then it listed John Stoll, X’s new head of news. I thought, of anyone, the head of news would be the most likely to help us, so this felt promising. I sent him a PM on X from my personal account and in less than 2 minutes he responded and said he would take care of it.
8/8
90 minutes later he gave us confirmation from support saying our account was hacked and they are resetting it for us. A few minutes later we had our Snopes account back!
In summary, always use two-factor authentication. We left it off because we had multiple employees logging into the account, but clearly it’s not worth the risk.
X has the worst customer support I’ve ever seen, even if you pay $1,000/month you can’t email them.
Grok did help save the day by pointing us to John Stoll.
aramovaa@snopes it's trivial to setup 2fa across multiple devices using the code method with proton pass, Google auth, or virtually anything else. Bitlocker I believe has a corp management system.
Can bad actors still compromise you? Sure. Is insider risk still bad? Absolutely. Is it better than no 2fa? Oh yeah.