Twitter accidentally reset a large number of users' passwords after just a few accounts were hijacked, the company admitted on Thursday.
The company changed passwords Wednesday night on accounts its engineers believed were hacked. But it also mistakenly reset a "larger number" of accounts than were actually hacked.
In both cases, users were notified of the resets by email.
"Twitter believes that your account may have been compromised by a website or service not associated with Twitter," the email read. "We've reset your password to prevent others from accessing your account."
It remains unclear how many accounts were affected by both the actual password compromise and the reset overkill — or whether in all of the mistaken cases the original passwords were set back to what they were.
However, TheWrap was among those emailed, but by Thursday morning its password was not reset.
Twitter did not immediately return TheWrap's request for comment.
"In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised," Twitter said in a statement on its website. "We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused."
