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PSA: Bitly Reports That Their Security May Have Been Compromised

You may bitly-logo-pufferfishJ-300x267[1]have noticed over the past day or so that your Bitly account isn’t working with your Twitter or Facebook accounts any more. There’s a reason for that.

Bitly announced late last night on their blog that they had encountered a security issue:

We have reason to believe that Bitly account credentials have been compromised. We have no indication at this time that any accounts have been accessed without permission. For our users’ protection, we have taken proactive steps to ensure the security of all accounts, including disconnecting all users’ Facebook and Twitter accounts. All users can safely reconnect these accounts at their next login.

Just to be safe, Bitly has disabled any connection between a user’s Bitly account and their Twitter or Facebook accounts, and Bitly is asking users to log in to the Bitly site and reconnect the accounts.

Here’s what you have to do:

1) Log in to your account and click on ‘Your Settings,’ then the ‘Advanced’ tab.

2) At the bottom of the ‘Advanced’ tab, select ‘Reset’ next to ‘Legacy API key.’

3) Copy down your new API key and change it in all applications. These can include social publishers, share buttons and mobile apps.

4) Go to the ‘Profile’ tab and reset your password.

5) Disconnect and reconnect any applications that use Bitly. You can check which accounts are connected under the ‘Connected Accounts’ tab in ‘Your Settings.’

In my case, all I had to do was go to the Bitly website, log in, and then try to tweet a link. I was prompted to authorize my twitter account again. It took maybe 10 seconds, tops.

Like many users, I logged in to bitly with my Twitter account, which is why they did not send me a warning email concerning the security breach.  I’m betting that I am not the only person who was surprised when Bitly stopped working, so I thought this was worth a post.

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Comments


Greg Strandberg May 10, 2014 um 11:20 pm

Here’s the first I heard of it. Wonder what was going on. They certainly weren’t going in to click on all my links, that’s for sure.


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