Twitter hacked -- change your password now!

Today the people at Twitter officially announced that over 250,000 accounts were hacked, following a short but odd outage on the site yesterday (coincidentally alongside another outage at Amazon). They say this was their first "real" hack, as opposed to previous attacks that were somewhat simpler. Of the recent hack, the staff remarked it was actually a considerably "sophisticated" attack.

Unfortunately, this means that many of Twitter's userbase are now in the hands of the hackers, who may use or sell the information to their own ends. So what can you do? Well, the answer is simple, and Twitter staff was quick to suggest it: change your password, whether or not you received the e-mail notification sent out to potential targets. It's just good practice.

Here's a copy of the e-mail sent out from Twitter about the hacking:

"Hi, Name Namerson,

Twitter believes that your account may have been compromised by a website or service not associated with Twitter. We’ve reset your password to prevent others from accessing your account.

You’ll need to create a new password for your Twitter account. You can select a new password at this link:

www.link.com

As always, you can also request a new password from our password-resend page: https://twitter.com/account/resend_password
Please don’t reuse your old password and be sure to choose a strong password (such as one with a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols).
In general, be sure to:

• Always check that your browser’s address bar is on a https://twitter.com website before entering your password. Phishing sites often look just like Twitter, so check the URL before entering your login information!
• Avoid using websites or services that promise to get you lots of followers. These sites have been known to send spam updates and damage user accounts.
• Review your approved connections on your Applications page at https://twitter.com/settings/applications. If you see any applications that you don’t recognize, click the Revoke Access button.

For more information, visit our help page for hacked or compromised accounts."