The US Secret Service (@SecretService) launched an official Twitter account yesterday, and in their first tweet (and without a single trace of irony) asked others to follow them.

Secret Service spokesman – an oxymoron if ever there was one – Max Millen has said the Twitter profile will be used to “highlight the investigative missions, press releases, and distribute information to communities hosting national special security events, to explore Secret Service history and promote any recruiting opportunities.”

The account has rapidly moved to almost 10,000 followers, which is nice and all, but does the Secret Service really have a legitimate (and, indeed, welcome) place on a public social network?

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Last month I proposed a solution to the problem of ugly tweets (and individuals) appearing on your Twitter stream – a hide button.

However, there is another way Twitter could empower us to control what does and does not appear in our mentions folder – we should be able to untag ourselves when our username is included within undesirable content.

This would work very much like untagging yourself from a photo on Facebook, something which I used to have to do a lot until Facebook upgraded their privacy controls. Mentions are predominately a positive experience on Twitter and most of the time we welcome them into our lives, but as with everywhere else on the internet there are bad people out there, plus a decent pinch of good, old-fashioned weirdos, too.

I have seen my username included on Twitter for ‘retweets’ that are completely falsified – I never said or linked to what is being retweeted, but now all of a sudden I’m endorsing herbal Viagra and The Jonas Brothers (often in the same tweet). While I love the organic, manual retweet, this has always been a major flaw on Twitter. You can type in somebody’s username and have them say or do pretty much anything, and now that message is out there for potentially millions of people to see.

A one-click unmention button would enable us all to manage not only what we have to see in our inboxes, but Twitter could also configure this so that untagged tweets did not rank for that user in Twitter search, which would allow us all a greater level of security and protection from fraud. And who doesn’t want that?

No. *

* That is, unless you’re a part of the witness protection program, have serious stalker issues (either way), like to criticise your boss, only want to chat to your ‘real’ friends, don’t want your boyfriend/girlfriend, mother/father, sister/brother, aunt/uncle obsessing over your every word, really hate people or generally have something to hide. In which case, that’s cool, but maybe you’d be better off with something like MSN or a very private Facebook account, as opposed to a medium which by definition lends itself to open engagement, participation and connection. Besides, you do realise that the people you approve can just copy and paste the things you say, right? Right?

I had a strange dream last night.

I was on Twitter when news broke on TMZ.com that Oprah Winfrey had died. I read the article, shared the link, and then went out.

This was all in the dream, remember. As it continued, I came back home after a couple of hours had passed and it turned out that TMZ had pulled the story, that it was a mistake, and Oprah was very much alive. However, my “Oprah Winfrey has died!” tweet was still sitting there in all its glory, and had started to generate thousands of really negative reactions. People were calling me a liar, saying I’d obviously put this out just to get attention, and so on.

As it continued, one guy – who was clearly a huge fan of Oprah (Stedman, perhaps) – got so pissed that he hacked into my Twitter account and hooked me up with all the worst auto-tweeting applications on the planet. Suddenly, ‘I’ was sending out all manner of garbage and some really offensive spew – tweets linking to porn, racist gibberish, etc. It wasn’t looking good.

Still dreaming, and as the complaints went from thousands to millions, I became increasingly frustrated at my inability to deal with the problem. The thing was, I knew what I had to do – it was as easy as visiting the connections tab on my Twitter account and revoking access to all the auto-tweeting crap that had been injected into my account.

But, much like those nightmares where you’re trying to run away from the monster but your legs are stuck or simply refuse to work, in the dream I somehow just couldn’t quite get there, and could only watch in horror as my good Twitter name was torn to shreds.

Suffice to say, I woke in something of a fluster.

Silly as it was, the dream had some purpose. This morning, I checked my connections tab for the first time in a while, and sure enough there were a couple of things in there that I didn’t recognise and immediately revoked. Thankfully, they hadn’t started sending out any auto-nonsense to my timeline, but that doesn’t mean that they never would have.

You see, the problem with giving permission on Twitter is it’s forever – unless you do something about it. There are no layers of permission, certainly from Twitter’s end. You’re either in, or you’re out. Sure, some of these apps let you configure your preferences at their end, but it’s easy to overlook this and it’s really easy to grant permission one day and totally forget all about it the next.

(Especially late at night after one or two raspberry daiquiris – but I digress.)

I’ve written about this before, but I needed reminding myself. It pays to check your connections on a regular basis – once a week is a good habit to get into. Certainly, if you find yourself auto-tweeting – which is never a good thing – check your connections first. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the problem, and solution, will be in there.

As for Oprah – and just in case this article gets misinterpreted and becomes self-fulfilling and wholly ironic – she is, I would like to remind you, still with us.

(Although she hasn’t updated in a while.)

Earlier this week I started getting some curious emails from Twitter that informed me that some users had requested to follow me on the network. How strange, I thought – my status updates aren’t protected, so why not just click on the follow button like, you know, everybody else?

Well, this was a little different – they’d searched for me via my email address and Twitter then asked me for my permission, adding that the reason it was doing this was because my account wasn’t configured to let users find me by email.

The message also presented me with options to change these settings, and I promptly clicked on the ‘do not let others find me by my email address’ link.

Why? I’m not completely sure, to be honest, but something about it didn’t feel right. Concerns I had with the privacy implications of using Google Buzz were still lingering in my mind, and even though there’s a chance that some who search for me by my email address actually know me, because I readily share my email openly it’s significantly more likely that the majority will be spammers. Gmail handles 99.99% of that incoming spam for me – Twitter does not.

Earlier today, I logged on to Twitter.com and was presented with this pop-up.

This also gave me the choice to opt-out of being found by my mobile number, too, which I took. While there’s every chance that searches done by this method will be legitimate, there’s something about it that doesn’t feel right. Why not just search for my name? It’s unique enough that these other options aren’t really necessary for me. I suppose for the John Smiths of this world, and certainly those who keep their email address very private, it might be a little different.

Or not – the implications of being tracked by your email address or mobile number are significant, certainly if you wish to maintain a level of anonymity or privacy. I’m not a fan of the former, but that doesn’t mean that the latter should not be completely respected. Your boss likely knows your email address, as does your ex, and several other people that you might not want to be reading your tweets, or at least being able to definitively connect them with you.

As my friend Neil says:

I have no problem with someone authenticating their true identity privately with the provider. But I firmly believe that a person should be able to keep their true identity private from their online associates or lurkers.

And so, by being able to search by e-mail address, twitter has violated a trust – the trust given when the person signed up with the required e-mail address, assuming that information would be kept confidential.

To be fair, by providing us with this pop-up opt-out Twitter has taken some responsibility here. And the emails I received earlier in the week might have been part of their usual, stagger-in beta process where a few (lucky) users get their hands on the new stuff first. And we have been able to find users via their email address for some time. I have no problem with that, but there’s still something about this that makes me a little uncomfortable.

For starters, it’s on by default. (Update:  It’s marked on when you see the pop-up, but you are not automatically opted-in. See the comment below from Twitter product manager Josh Elman.)

I wonder how many will ignore the pop-up, or not realise the implications of being located using these methods. For many it won’t make a lick of difference. For some, it could be very important indeed.

I’m probably being a little overly paranoid and will perhaps adjust these settings in the future, but while I think it is somewhat useful for people you already know to find you within social networks, it’s not as important as being found by new people. Who won’t, naturally, know your email address or phone number, and so will have to find you because you’re standing out, by being interesting, useful and engaging.

My friends? They’ll probably ask me down the pub.

As Twitter grows in popularity, like Facebook it begins to resemble almost an internet within the internet. Indeed, if Facebook is the second internet, there’s a strong argument that Twitter, even with its relatively slight 25 million users, is the third.

With all the good that comparison brings, it also means a lot of the less savoury elements of the web arrive in abundance, too.

Here are five tips (and the now-compulsory bonus) to help you stay safe on Twitter.

1. Regularly change your password, particularly during any kind of phishing or XSS exploit. You don’t have to be paranoid, but use your common sense. If there’s any potential  risk to your password at all, why not just change it?
2. Consider using a URL expander (or software where it comes built-in) before clicking on a shortened link. Most shortened URLs are perfectly safe, but a certain percentage are going to lead you to places you don’t want to go, and might be harmful to your computer. Again: common sense prevails. Do you know the user who shared the link? Do you trust them? Is this the kind of content they typically share?
3. Be mindful of the things you say, as anybody could be reading. Who’s the worst person in the world that you can think of that might be reading your tweets? Your boss? Your mother? Your fiancée? If you always write with them in mind, you’re unlikely to go too far off course.
4. If you post under an alias, considering reserving your real name for future use and to protect from identity fraud. You never know when you might hit it big. Even if you think there’s no chance whatsoever, it costs you nothing and takes less than five minutes. Why not do it?
5. Take responsibility and make sure you’ve authorised all external connections to your account. If something is tweeting on your behalf, most of the time it’s because you ticked a box somewhere. Find that connection, and remove it.

BONUS: This is more of a request, actually – petition Twitter to let us backup our accounts. Currently, there’s no way to do this, which means if something happens to your profile there’s a risk you could lose everything. What if you get hacked, and the exploiter decides to delete everything you’ve ever written, unfollow all your friends, and generally run rampant? Sure, you can start over, but lots of us have a genuine history on the network. All those connections, and all that metadata, could be lost. There are various services that let you save your data offline, but there’s no way to get that back on to Twitter. And the only way I see that happening is if Twitter takes responsibility and provides us with this service.

I’ve made this point a couple of times but it’s worth saying again just in case it didn’t take – there’s no need to be paranoid about using social media. But it absolutely pays to be smart about it, too. And by following the guidelines above you can significantly improve the chances that your Twitter experience is always a good one.

You know – I had a feeling about this one right before I hit the publish button, and should have perhaps sat on things for a little while. But there you go – lessons learned.

Twitter didn’t pull @TechCrunch from the SUL. Valleywag have just revised their story. They were kind enough to tip me off (thanks @ryantate) but there’s still egg on my face. Apologies to all concerned. I really should know better.

Knowing my luck, Twitter will go ahead and do this anyway. Still, I’ve left my original piece below so I can bear the full impact of the shame. Threats of litigation to the usual address. Thanks.

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No real surprise after yesterday’s Twittergate shenanigans, but Twitter has pulled the TechCrunch account from the controversial suggested user list (reports Valleywag).

Regular readers will be fully aware of my feelings about the SUL – while I support the concept of recommending people to follow in principle, the way Twitter goes about it is both cock-eyed and decidedly unfair. Those lucky enough to be given a spot on the list benefit from tens of thousands of new followers on a near-daily basis. The rest of us have to earn our crust the old-fashioned way – by being interesting and useful.

So, hardly the biggest shock that TechCrunch isn’t an account that Twitter wants to recommend to newcomers, but this decision doesn’t reflect well on the social network, either. Indeed, it rather underlines the superficiality of the SUL and further supports the notion that the only reason anybody makes that list is because they’re almost exclusively pro-Twitter or work at Twitter. Or both.

No doubt the attention TechCrunch has been receiving the past few days will ensure that their Twitter network numbers don’t dip too much – and one assumes this will free them up to run riot – but typically when somebody is removed from the SUL their account completely flatlines. (See iJustine, although the gains she has seen in the past couple of days suggests she might be back on there.) This, of course, perfectly illustrates just how much of a gift the list is for anybody on Twitter. Even a blog as well-renowned as TechCrunch.

And they’re only about 65,000 users short of a cool million, too.