Twitter tells twitterers 'don't go changing'

Twitter tells twitterers 'don't go changing'

Change your name. Get locked out. Cry

Twitterers wanting to prevent the next British Constitutional crisis, or just keep the world informed on today's lunch selection, are advised to hang fire before undergoing any identity crises this week.

The microblogging and freedom-preserving service warned users late yesterday that it was "researching username, password change problems".

It said it was getting reports of users being locked out of their accounts after resetting their passwords, changing email addresses and changing user names. Both established twits and newbies were affected.

Unfortunately, the firm seems puzzled as to the cause of the problem, with advice amounting to 'don't change your user name, email or password'.

Worryingly, the problem has been apparent for almost a week, with Twitter support first flagging up a known issue last Thursday. At that stage, it seemed to be suggesting the problem was a cache issue at the users end.

By yesterday, the comments on the support forum suggested established users were getting increasingly frustrated, while some of the posts from newer users gave a hint as to why it's not exactly hard to hijack other peoples' accounts. �