In the last few hours, a number of China-watchers have received warnings about attempts to compromise their Twitter accounts:

Wow, my Twitter account just got hacked. Party Congresses are such fun.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) November 8, 2012

Hmm. Just notified by Twitter that others were attempting access to cmphku account.

— China Media Project (@cmphku) November 8, 2012

Count me among those reporting their twitter accts were hacked/compromised in the last hour. also @cmphku @prchovanec

— Adam Minter (@AdamMinter) November 8, 2012

@tulletilsynet I got kicked off Twitter with a message that account had been compromised, sent me an email link to reset password

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) November 8, 2012

And me. Should I feel proud? @adamminter: Count me among those reporting twitter accts were hacked in the last hour also @cmphku @prchovanec

— Offbeat China (@OffbeatChina) November 8, 2012

@larsonchristina @prchovanec @offbeatchina @adamminter @cmphku Me too. And I’m not even in Beijing this week.

— Mara Hvistendahl (@MaraHvistendahl) November 8, 2012

At The Next Web, Josh Ong has posted a screenshot of the warning sent to China Media Project, as well as background on similar cases and other current disruptions.

Twitter’s support pages offer suggestions for keeping your account secure, including the following basics:

• Use a strong password.
• Watch out for suspicious links, and always make sure you’re on Twitter.com before you enter your login information.
• Don’t give your username and password out to untrusted third-parties, especially those promising to get you followers or make you money.
• Make sure your computer and operating system is up-to-date with the most recent patches, upgrades, and anti-virus software.

Updated on November 8th at 10:55 PST: As the number of reports increased, it became clear that the forced password resets were not limited to China or those with links to it. Twitter has issued a statement explaining that the number of warnings issued was inflated by mistake. The company has not said where the epicentre of actually suspected attacks lay.

We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community. As part of that commitment, in instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users.

In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.