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FrillyPancake | 10:40 Sat 31st Oct 2015 | How it Works
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Right long story short i dont 'do' social networking apart from the odd post on here....i dont use facebook etc either. Anyway, i had a chance meeting with a famous person the other month and felt the need to set up a wee twitter account to say how it made my day. This is all. The tweet didnt even end up reaching them so was a complete easte of time. Ive since read into deleting said account as i will never use it again. Anyway a relative of mine saw my twitter accont online and questioned my meeting with this person. I was shocked as when i googled 'me' to see if i could find 'me' on twitter nothing came up. I was glad-this is the reason i dont social network-hate the fact folk can see you posting stuff online. Anyway two Q's for you bright people please help me 1)HOW on earth did this person find me, find it quite creepy as i cannot even find me???
2) can local people on twitter also view me-do they know if ive viewed them? Ie my little cousin has an account and i used to on to check her account when she was much younger on her mothers request to 'keep an eye' on what she was up to etc, anyway could she 'see' me now ive joined twitter/see me looking at her twitter account etc? The whole thing has me totally discombobulated to say the least and has really freaked me out if im honest. Tia. Frilly
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Who was the famous person?
Question Author
Thats completely irrelevant. It doesnt answer my question? I dont wish to say who it was online.
They can only find you by your Twitter username, you can switch your account to private so only people you want can read your tweets

And nobody can see if you've read their tweets
At the top of the twitter homepage you can see "Here are some people you might enjoy following. Refresh · View all"

It can be local, family and/or friends and famous twits.
Question Author
Ok doky but my username is (for joe bloggs) joeB912275454 so unless someone knew that exact sequence, i dont understand how they found me, i couldnt and im the only one surely who knows my 'username'? This is whats thrown me......
Question Author
Ok now to dlete however when the youtube tutorial mentiones the 'deactivate my account button' i go into settings and i dont have a deactivate my account button? Anyone know why this is? I hate having this account now, and want the damn thing to close for good.....
On your posts, you'll see that your proper name comes up with @joeB9122.... After it.
To,deactivate,your account:
https://support.twitter.com/articles/15358
You seem to be quite short tempered for someone with such a 'cuddly' name, if you don't mind my saying. ;)
^that was to pancake not zacs.
Question Author
Sorry svejk im not normally this annoyed, its just annoyed me that someone has been snooping as that would seem the only way that theyve found me......am annoyed at myself for setting it up in the first place mostly....
Frilly -people can search your name and twitter will come up with suggestions - try doing a tweet search using your AB name as see what comes up - I've just tried it -not saying its you, but if someone who knows your full name puts it in then it will give them suggestions -like FB does. I hope you get it resolved and deleted, though if you are not tweeting its hardly likely to cause you further embarrassment.
Other people registered on twitter can click the 'find friends' button to search their own email contacts in yahoo, aol, outlook and gmail. If the email you used to register with Twitter is in their own email contact list you will be suggested to them.
@Chinajan

That is the single most annoying facility on Facebook and Twitter.

If it were a button labelled "Please help yourself to the contents of my private address book and breach my friends' and family members' privacy without *their* explicit say so."

You only need one thoughtless/lazy friend to use this for your data to get "out there" and that email address you only handed out to family suddenly becomes a spam magnet.

You've hit the nail on the head and should be given Best Answer.

@Hypognosis Thanks - I was a bit late to the party and I fear the OP may not have seen the explanation of how the situation probably came about. There is a remedy. I use Twitter but I set my account up with an email that I don't use for anything else. This way, no one has that email address in their own email contacts. If the OP wished to continue to use Twitter it would be a simple matter to change the contact email address to a different, spare one.
@Chinajan

//If the OP wished to continue to use Twitter it would be a simple matter to change the contact email address to a different, spare one.//

You have slightly lost me there. "The contact email address" is not something I recognise as a Twitter feature. What twitter calls DMs (direct messages) are still addresed to the person's Twitter handle which, in many cases is a pseudonym, as we have here, on AB.

Late adopters, myself among them, are encouraged during the signup procedure to create an account *under their real name*, since this discourages trolling and actionable abuse. The need to add digits after the name only arises when the initial attempt reveals someone else has that username already and it asks you to make the ID unique, in some way.

Whilst tacking digits on the end does achieve this, the first name and surname are still "Joe Bloggs" and the Twitter search engine throws up matches while you are typing. You only need to have an uncommon first and second name combination for the search to find you before any of the digits are needed to further narrow the search. Of course a close relative, who knew of the meeting with the celebrity would be in search of the OPer for that very reason.

Having a photo of yourself as an avatar helps people who know you pick you out from all the namesakes, of course. Not an issue here, as that is a whole lot of palaver for someone who only wanted to make 1 tweet in the first place.

Despite all the above waffle, even if you opt for a non-real-world username, you are still instantly 'discoverable' by way of choosing to use the email all your friends/rellys know you by to sign up. They only tell you about this feature after it's too late to change it and, for some, setting up an auxiliary email account, via their ISP's website and tweaking their mail-reader settings, to suit, is just an extra half hour's hassle they can live without.


Incidentally, posting a tweet with no avatar is referred to as "posting as an egg". So many trolls have posted as "eggs", setting up throwaway emails and throwaway Twitter acounts to do so, that many, if not all, celebs adopt a policy of "never reply to egg posts". So that's what caused the lack of response, IMHO.

//and felt the need to set up a wee twitter account to say how it made my day.//

But they know this and it takes up their time to read hundreds of such Tweets, I should imagine. It's a lot simpler to just fawn all over them and gush incoherently about how much you love their work.

No. The Twitter account is about *you*. A nice/not nice thing happens in your life so you make sure everyone knows about it.

"... you are still instantly 'discoverable' by way of choosing to use the email all your friends/rellys know you by to sign up. They only tell you about this feature after it's too late to change it and, for some, setting up an auxiliary email account, via their ISP's website and tweaking their mail-reader settings, to suit, is just an extra half hour's hassle they can live without..."

Yes, I seem to have worded my response poorly. The OP asked how their relative found them, and my answer was what you have said in this part of your quote - that the OP must have signed up with an email that is in the address book of the relative who found them. That relative, from their own Twitter page, would have clicked on 'find people you know' or on 'connect other address books' from their own Twitter page [right hand side] to find people on Twitter whose email address is in their own contacts. And this has led them to Frilly.

I'd suggest to Frilly to delete this Twitter account, from 'settings', and if s/he wants to use Twitter sign up again with a one off email address and use a made up name. Clean sheet. :)

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