Today my twitter identity was stolen just as the transiting Moon conjuncted my natal Vertex. I don’t have a great deal of experience using the Vertex in interpretation; the most I’ve ever gleaned that seems to pass the smell test is that this is a point of fatedness, that events in conjunction with the Vertex are in some way unavoidable. Obviously, as identity thefts go, this was minor, and anyone who knows me (or has been around longer than five minutes) will be unlikely to respond to the ‘making money’ message. What’s more interesting is how they got my info, as I’m usually very careful and wary of anything hinky. This morning an individual I trust sent me a direct message through twitter asking if the person in a video was me, and included a link. Possible phishing went through my mind, but knowing that someone had put a video link on the internet some time ago claiming it was me (supposedly giving a talk on Juno, I think it was), I felt compelled to check it out, as I didn’t want anyone to be led into a scam in my name–ha!–and I mistakenly assumed that the individual who (I thought) sent the DM had already seen it–in this case, that little voice that usually helps me avoid problems urged me forward–and maybe that’s in a small way what fate really is, something that the guardian voice pushes you toward, that you wouldn’t normally choose to do but which, for any number of far flung reasons, must be done.

The rest of the story is this: I clicked on the link, which seemed to take me to the twitter sign in board. I had a moment’s pause, as I’d already been on twitter this morning and thought I was still signed in, but, knowing that there are glitches (in both the system and my memory) I signed in–then when I wasn’t taken to the (now I realize, imaginary) video, I realized my mistake. The worst part was that I tried to re-set my password immediately (in a new screen, of course) but twitter’s ability to handle capacity is so touch and go that I soon gave up for a while–until I started getting told that I was spamming people–and one of the people who told me so apparently didn’t know that his DM had the same spam message attached!

So, my apologies to everyone who was inconvenienced by this. I am dismayed by the way twitter is overly hands-off on issues like this, with no easy way to notify administrators in a situation in any timely way. Recently one of my favorite twitter friends was rudely and abusively harassed using what I would describe as ‘hate language,’ and her frustration at the difficulty of notifying Twitter and trying to get them to take action was understandable, especially because no avenue existed where she could establish actual contact with anyone in charge. I’d like to say to Twitter: sometimes you’ve just got to have contact with the masses, no matter how unpleasant you believe it will be, if you want to keep them coming back; one too many experiences like this, and it won’t be seen as such fun, anymore.