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I feel like I’m generally the guy who catches the dumb stuff. I am usually the skeptical one in case a scam emerges. I can figure out when an email has a sketchy link within it. And generally I understand the security issues at play that might lead you to, for example, want to use a password manager or turn on two-factor authentication.
But sometimes, something happens that makes me question everything. And that happened just last night when I attempted to use a new Twitter feature called Twitter for Professionals.
Adding the feature to my account for Tedium, I decided, hey, it might be cute to add the launch date for the newsletter. Given that I had designated the account as a brand and I was being asked in a professional context, this probably will be no big thing to change. It might even be fun, even.
But Twitter the professional application and Twitter the COPPA-compliant social network apparently didn’t talk this through, and as a result, I had accidentally fallen into the trap of telling Twitter that Tedium was six years old—and not old enough to exist on Twitter.
Oops.
So, the result of that was I ended up locking myself out of my account. Like an idiot.
Now, the fact that I was able to get back in after a few hours is besides the point. I think the part that is extremely painful about all this is that I now must live with the knowledge that I walked into a clear trap and did something stupid and didn’t realize it until it was too late. I feel like my confidence took a hit from this.
I can’t be that guy who makes the holier-than-thou security or technical recommendations because I made an incredibly stupid mistake! Who will trust me on these matters knowing that I did something as stupid as lock myself out of my own Twitter account?
So yeah, that doesn’t feel particularly good, but I guess what I can say is that I can at least discuss this with everyone else who has had a brain fart like this in the past and hopefully make someone else feel better about this.
I think my instinct when this happened was to tell other people, even though it makes me look a bit like an idiot, because maybe it could help other people.
We all do stupid things thinking we’re clever. It’s OK. You’ll survive.
Time limit given ⏲: 30 minutes
Time left on clock ⏲: 9 minutes, 31 seconds
