Twitter have been forced to address a viral hoax that has been doing the rounds, convincing users to inadvertently lock themselves out of their account.

Do you remember the iPhone ‘Wave’ hoax from a few years back? If you need reminding, it was that time when 4Chan launched a fake Apple ad campaign, alerting users to the fact that iOS8 could be charged via putting it in the microwave.

Of course, if you spent more than two seconds thinking about this, you would likely realise why this was a bad idea.

Since this is the Internet we’re talking about, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this type of viral hoax is still going around. However, this time, the folks over at Twitter have been forced to step in.

A few weeks ago, news made the rounds that if you sent someone a moon emoji in Facebook Messenger, you could unlock the app’s ‘dark mode’. Eager to learn of more of these nifty tips, some highly-suggestible Twitter users have now been falling for a fake ‘hack’.

The hack in question tells users that if they change their birth date to 2007, you can unlock some pretty sweet colours for your profile. Sounds absolutely awesome, right? Well…

Earlier this morning, the official Twitter Support account was forced to issue a message warning against this supposed hack.

“We’ve noticed a prank trying to get people to change their Twitter birthday in their profile to unlock new color schemes,” they explained. “Please don’t try this.”

“We don’t have different color schemes based on your birthday.”

So what’s the issue? Well, the thing is that if you alter your birthdate to 2007, Twitter believes you are under the age of 13, and therefore locks you out for breaching their terms of service.

This of course means that if you want to get your account restored, you’ll need to go through the long and arduous process of proving to Twitter that you’re not actually 13, but rather a twenty-something who managed to fall for a Twitter hoax.

We’re not sure which is more embarrassing, really.

https://twitter.com/stay420_high/status/1110724174505496582

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