Scheduling social media across time zones through Buffer is temporarily unavailable due to a hack the service has suffered today. Founder and CEO of Buffer announced the news on Twitter as well:
We’ve stopped all posting from @buffer until we have got to the bottom of what caused this scam. Sorry once again. We’re investigating.
Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) October 26, 2013
Buffer has revoked its Facebook API keys so new users are not able to authenticate to add the application at all and they have removed it from all users accounts which means all previous posts will also disappear. It’s not clear if they will do the same for Twitter yet.
We’ve temporarily disabled our app for Facebook. All previous Buffer posts on FB are hidden for now. We’ll update again soon. – Carolyn
Buffer (@buffer) October 26, 2013
In case you haven’t noticed, many of your social media friends have started to post scam status updates, many of which include large companies as well. It appears the issue started a few hours ago with users reporting that scheduled tweets were disappearing from their dashboards or being unable to login to the service. The company is yet to confirm how the hack was performed and what steps users should take to protect themselves.
How you should proceed after this issue:
Facebook:
- Visit the applications page
- Look for the Buffer application
- Click the small on the right of the page
- Click remove in the dialog that appears and the application will be removed.
Twitter:
- Visit the applications page
- Find Buffer in the list and click the “Revoke Access†button
Google+:
- Visit the applications page
- Mouse over the application, then click the pencil that appears and choose Disconnect appâ€
LinkedIn:
- Visit the applications page
- Tick Buffer, then click Remove
