Finding lost app

WidgitOnline · 2017-09-13T16:20:40.660Z

I confess this is a mess fully of my own making.

In July, I started prototyping Twitter integration with our web application. I created a few Twitter accounts to test with and with at least one of these created an app in apps.twitter.com. I must have triggered something by creating several accounts in a short period of time because some of the accounts were quickly suspended which led to me being less disciplined than I should have been in creating and keeping track of the accounts I was using, but I eventually got my prototype working.

Now, I want tidy up and create the final app using the correct Twitter account for the finished product in production. However, when I try to create the app, I am told the name app name is already in use. I can believe that I used that name for an app in July; however, the app name doesn’t appear in apps.twitter.com in any of the accounts I created (provided I’ve remembered them all, which I think I have). I doubt anyone else would have registered an app with that name because it’s pretty specific to our business so the question is, where is it and how can I find it? Is it possible it’s attached to an account that’s suspended and therefore not showing up in apps.twitter.com?

Tim Down

andypiper · 2017-09-14T13:39:41.452Z

Unfortunately we’re not at liberty to discuss specific account and application connections on these forums for privacy reasons (also, only a limited group of individuals have access to personally identifiable information, which I’m sure you’ll appreciate). You’ll need to raise a ticket via the platform support forms to discuss further.

Alternatively, you may want to consider how important the “name” of the app is in this context - it only gets displayed in the oauth screen for login with Twitter, and in the source field of any Tweets that are generated by the app, so slightly modifying the name you choose to use, to find one that doesn’t clash with something that’s already registered, may be a simpler way forward.

WidgitOnline · 2017-09-14T13:59:21.545Z

Thanks very much for the reply and apologies for putting the specific account details in. I’ll edit them out in a moment, although I don’t know if that will help.

I’d rather not change the name of the app. As you say, it appears on the OAuth screen which is the point at which you need maximum trust from the user as they hand over enormous power to your app, so anything that looks slightly suspicious, such as an app name that doesn’t quite match the web application, could potentially undermine that trust. However, I’d change it if I had to. We’re going live in 1-2 months, hence trying to resolve this now rather than at the last minute.

andypiper · 2017-09-14T14:52:56.094Z

No need to edit stuff out - just explaining that even given that information, we’re not able to help you with private data in a public space like this the way forward would be to raise a ticket via the form I mentioned. Unfortunately if it does turn out that the app name is owned by another user, then you’ll still be in the same spot, since we’re not able to transfer apps between unrelated accounts.

WidgitOnline · 2017-09-14T15:14:52.996Z

I have already created a ticket via the form you provided a link to, so thank you very much for that.

Knowing which account the app belongs to would be sufficient to solve my problem, provided it’s one we control, because then I can delete the app and (presumably) use the name for a new app in the correct account. The relevant question that I think could be answered generally is: say I create an account and with that account create an app. Soon afterwards that account is suspended because it’s triggered some kind of too-many-new-users-in-a-short-space-of-time-from-one-IP alarm. If I later log into that account (without getting it unsuspended) and go to apps.twitter.com, will the app show up?