At onBRANDING, we are warning about a new harmful application circulating on Twitter. It is the Twitter Family Tree API, which allows users to tweet their Twitter family tree, when in reality it is secretly allowing the API of a suspicious website to access your account and follow other accounts without your knowledge.

Twitter Family Tree is actually an application that, once you grant it access, takes advantage of it to perform actions on your Twitter account without you noticing.

How does Twitter Family Link work?

This application is obtained through a website called roundyear.fun and is becoming popular among many Twitter users because it generates your Twitter Family Tree (Twitter family tree).

What this app does is create your Twitter family tree based on the accounts you interact with most on Twitter and present it in a family-tree-style diagram.

In fact, a user has discovered the pattern the tool follows to determine which accounts appear in your family tree:

• Parents: the 2 main accounts whose tweets you “like” the most.
• Spouse: the account you interact with the most.
• Children: two accounts you have replied to recently.

The “game” is simple to run and may sound like a lot of fun, but in reality it is used to take control of your Twitter account and carry out actions without you knowing. When you click on the website, a message appears asking people to log in with their Twitter account, with an option to “post a tweet with your result” automatically selected.

What happens when Twitter Family Tree accesses your Twitter account?

After logging in to its API and granting it access to your Twitter account, you will be giving permission for the Twitter Family Tree website to:

• Access your Tweet timeline (including protected tweets), as well as your lists.
• View your Twitter profile information and your account settings.
• See the accounts you follow, as well as those you have muted and blocked.
• Follow and unfollow accounts without you knowing.
• Update your profile and account settings.
• Post and delete tweets on your behalf, and interact with tweets posted by others (like, unlike, reply to a tweet, retweet, etc.) on your behalf.
• Create, manage, and delete lists and collections on your behalf.
• Mute, block, and report accounts on your behalf.

What hidden objective is Twitter Family Tree pursuing?

What this website is trying to do is use your account to follow other accounts and then mute them so you do not detect them or see them in your feed. In this way, they take control of the Twitter account without the user having any suspicion that someone is manipulating it.

Although it has not been confirmed, this organisation could be offering a service to gain followers on Twitter. In this way, people who want to gain followers on their Twitter account quickly and in an unconventional way pay online agencies for a follower-growth service. What they will not explain to these users is the secret behind how they grow their accounts with real users—users who have in turn been deceived using techniques like Twitter Family Tree.

In short, you will be giving the creators of the app full access to your Twitter account, thereby becoming the product they make money from—selling followers, one of which, incidentally, is your account.

Round Year Fun, the company behind Twitter Family Tree, was publicly reported in 2020

Back in May 2020, the Affinitweet portal, which offers a similar, fully legitimate API that allows users to access games and learn interesting statistics about their account, reported Round Year Fun’s fraudulent practices and what it was doing with Twitter Famlily, violating the privacy and security of Twitter users’ accounts.

What you should do as a user

As a user, it is important to know that these Twitter and Facebook games that often seem fun are usually an entry point for collecting data or controlling our social media accounts for the benefit of others. A good practice, when a viral game like this appears, is to research who is behind it and also read all the permissions you are granting a website before installing it.

Sources: Forbes.com, Twitter