On Wednesday, Norman Fenton, Professor Emeritus at Queen Mary University of London, published an article describing how he lost control of his Twitter (now X) account to a hacker on 18 March but has now regained limited control.
“After sending a spam ‘vote for me’ direct message (with a malicious link) to all my mutual followers on 20 March, the attackers began posting spam publicly. Not sporadically, but continuously: the bot was posting roughly once per second, pausing only intermittently to repost content from accounts I follow. By the time I regained access, there were thousands of spam posts and reposts,” he said. “For now, anyone visiting my timeline will see little but pages of spam.”
Prof. Fenton ended his article by saying, “Regaining access to my account ultimately required persistence, external pressure, and, quite likely, legal escalation. Many users facing similar attacks will not have those options.
“If X cannot reliably protect accounts, respond promptly to verified compromise reports, and restore control without unnecessary barriers, then users are left dangerously exposed.
“What’s clear right now is that when things go wrong, you will be largely on your own.”
Read more: I’ve regained control of my hacked X account, Norman Fenton, 25 March 2026
In response to Prof. Fenton’s experience, Dr. Scott McLachlan, formerly a lecturer in Digital Technologies for Healthcare at King’s College London, posted a Substack note taking Prof. Fenton’s final remarks a logical step further.
Hellbound and Down 