How to remove my phone number from someone else's Twitter account?

Question

I got a new phone number, and I am receiving dozens of Twitter notifications an hour even throughout the night.

From everything I've seen texting STOP to the Twitter short code, which to my understanding is 40404 (that's the number the notifications are coming from) should remove my number from the old user's account.

Unfortunately, this is not working. It is a prepaid phone, the notifications are burning through all my minutes, it is keeping me awake and distracted and I need it to stop.

I have tried adding the number to my own Twitter account, but it is blocked because someone else has it on their account.

One reason I could think of that it may not be removing with the text to the short code is that the offending account actually has a Google Voice number listed as their mobile number which is forwarding to me. (Yes, I understand this does not make sense with the previously mentioned not being able to add it to my Twitter account, but I'm desperate.) So I tried adding the number to my Google Voice account, but that did not work either.

I can't think of anything else to do. Please help.

Followup: I just tried tweeting myself from their phone so that I could find out who it was and ask them to remove the number from their account, but it seems the tweet never went through. Maybe the account was deactivated?

Apparently you can search Twitter users by phone number. I tried searching by phone number and this person seems to have disabled that.

Since I'm getting no response at all from 40404 (including tweets, STOP, HELP, START, etc) I thought I'd try their international long code (+44 7624 801423). It did not work. I then checked with my carrier, and they do not support international texting. However if you are reading this for help, and your carrier does, please note that I read Twitter requires U.S. users to use the short code, so it probably will not work anyway.

Answer 1

Twitter's help pages have some info on this:

• My email, phone number, or username is already in use
• How is my phone number associated with another Twitter account?

but their only real answer for your question is this part:

• Still need help? Contact Support.

I suggest you do that.

Alternatively, ask your phone service provider to change your new phone number and hopefully refund the minutes used by the number's previous customer. Or maybe they can block Twitter for you.

Answer 2

1. Log in with phone number.
2. Click "forgot password".
3. Click "send code to phone".
4. Reset foreign account password.
5. Create new password. I used "temp01".
6. Log in.
7. Go to settings.
8. Click on "Mobile".
9. Delete phone number.
10. Log out.

Done. no more SMS from foreign accounts.

Answer 3

This won't help if you do not have access to your number, but I run into this problem every time I need to create a new twitter account (for projects, for client web sites, the twitter API requires a phone) and I forget which account I put the phone number into, but...

To disconnect your number from twitter (e.g. to clear it so you can use for a new account), simply text “stop” to 40404

Answer 4

Perhaps they were simply following celeb tweets without creating an account. Look up SMS commands for Twitter and start unfollowing each celeb as you see the tweet. You can then confirm those texts stopped by monitoring that celeb account. This will work even for non-celeb accounts and you can monitor any non-private ones. Since you aren’t getting notification texts, follow etc. and your tweet doesn’t land that’s probably what’s happened.