Why am I following random accounts on X (Twitter)?

No. None of X's help pages on following, signing up or suggestions describes X following anyone for you. X's FAQ for new users puts it simply: "After you click or tap the Follow button on someone's profile, you're following them." And X's page on compromised accounts lists following, unfollowing or blocking "you didn't make or approve" among the signs that someone else is using your account.

Signing up doesn't follow anyone either, going by X's help. Its page on signing up gives advice: "Set up your timeline by following people or Topics", and "Follow our official account, @Support." What today's sign-up screens suggest, or pre-select, X's help doesn't say.

Twitter's own systems have added follows, though. In May 2010 a bug let people make others follow them, and in January 2017 about 560,000 people, by Twitter's estimate, were made to follow @POTUS by mistake. Both are below, with the 2009 sign-up page that let new users follow 20 suggested accounts at once.

The follow came from your account, so something used it:

• An app you connected and allowed to follow for you.
• A browser extension or a script in the tab where you're signed in to X. It needs no permission screen, and doesn't appear in X's list of connected apps.
• Someone who has your password, or someone you added to a team in X Pro.
• On an account opened in 2009, Twitter's sign-up page, which let new users follow 20 suggested accounts at once.
• A Twitter bug or account transfer, as in 2010 and 2017.

It doesn't have to mean your account was hacked. X's page on compromised accounts says so itself: "Unexpected updates don't always mean that your account was compromised. Occasionally, a third-party application can have a bug that causes unexpected behavior."

In your X settings, "Apps and sessions" lists the apps connected to your account, each with its permissions: how to see and revoke them. An app with read-only access can see who you follow but can't follow anyone. One with write access may be able to: on X's older sign-in method, that's the level called "Read and Write", which includes following and unfollowing accounts for you, and on the newer one, X's help lists "Follow and unfollow people for you" among what an app can be allowed to do. Going by its text as of October 2026, X's web app also gives the date you approved each app on the app's page, which helps you spot one you connected around the time the follows began.

"Free followers" sites, which promise you followers for nothing, have used exactly this access. In January 2014, Trend Micro found one whose users' accounts "will also be used to follow other accounts as well". In June 2014, Bitdefender found scammers who had people authorise TweetDeck, then signed their accounts up, without telling them, to "follow 100 other users".

Apps on X's self-serve API plans can't do it any more. X removed following from its Free API tier on 22 August 2025, and from all its self-serve plans on 20 April 2026. X doesn't say whether its Enterprise plan still can. None of that limits an extension, a script or a person signed in as you.

X's page on compromised accounts counts follows you didn't make as reason enough for its steps: change your password, make sure your email address is secure, and revoke the apps you don't recognise. Why X seems to unfollow people for you has the steps, including the sessions a new password leaves logged in. If you use teams in X Pro, check the members list too: X's page on compromised accounts strongly recommends removing anyone you don't recognise, and its page on teams says admins and contributors "Can take action on behalf of the team account (post, repost, Direct Message, like, etc.)".

Websites and newsletters link to X's follow page, x.com/intent/follow, to get you to follow an account. X's developer pages say that for someone logged out, it "displays an inline sign in form for logged out users and follows the target X account on successful login".

X's website doesn't work that way any more, going by its web app's code as of October 2026. A follow link opens the account's profile and asks "Do you want to follow @name?", with the buttons "Follow @name" and "Cancel". Logged out, it first asks you to log in: "You'll need to log in before you can Follow anyone." Nothing is followed until you tap "Follow @name". In X's iPhone and Android apps, X's developer pages say, a follow link opens the profile, where you tap Follow yourself.

Share buttons on websites can name accounts too, but X only suggests them. After you post, the account "may be suggested as an account to follow", X's developer pages say.

Liking or reposting a post doesn't follow its author. X says those shape its suggestions: "We may make suggestions based on your activity on X, such as your likes or reposts, who you follow, and accounts and posts that you view or otherwise interact with", its page on account recommendations says. Its page on suggestions adds the contacts you uploaded and, if your settings allow, your visits to other websites that show X content. No X page says a like or a repost follows anyone.

These can look like follows, and aren't:

• "Who to follow", which X's glossary calls "an automated list of recommended accounts we think you might find interesting".
• Promoted Accounts, which advertisers pay for: X's page on suggestions says it "may include Promoted Accounts as suggestions for accounts for you to follow".
• Topics, which bring posts into your timeline "without having to follow individual accounts", in the glossary's words.
• Communities: once you join one, its posts "appear in the Home timelines of its members", and X's page doesn't say joining follows anyone.
• Spaces, which you can listen to without following the host. In a Space, "Follow host" is a button you tap, going by X's app text as of October 2026.
• Subscriptions: X's page doesn't say subscribing to someone follows them.

In an article of November 2024, The New York Times said it had registered six new accounts the month before, and found that Elon Musk "is one of the first suggested accounts". A suggested account, not a follow: we found no report of X making new accounts follow him.

In 2009, Twitter's sign-up page suggested accounts to follow. Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, wrote in March 2009 that "only a subset of twenty accounts are randomly displayed as suggestions during the new user signup process", and TechCrunch reported that the list "allowed users to follow all of these recommendations at once". Anil Dash, one of the suggested accounts, wrote that he averaged 100 new followers an hour on a typical day, and that he couldn't tell which of them had chosen to follow him and which "just were too lazy to change the defaults when they signed up". On 21 January 2010, Twitter replaced the 20 random suggestions with categories you browse and pick from. So an account opened in 2009 may follow accounts its owner doesn't remember choosing.

On 10 May 2010, a bug let anyone make other users follow them, by posting "accept" and a username on Twitter's website, Gizmodo reported. Twitter undid the forced follows, and its status page told people what to do about any it missed: "If you are still seeing folks you are following who you didn't choose to follow, please use the block or unfollow tools to remedy."

In January 2017, the @POTUS account passed from Barack Obama's administration to Donald Trump's. The Obama White House had announced that the account would keep its "handle and followers", and NPR reported that Twitter would "automatically switch all 13 million followers of the Obama-era @POTUS account to follow both @POTUS44 and the new @POTUS account for Trump". But Twitter also made mistakes. Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, explained the next day that people who followed @POTUS44 after noon Eastern time on 20 January "were mistakenly set to also follow @POTUS", and that "Some people who unfollowed @POTUS in the past were mistakenly marked to now follow @POTUS". He estimated that about 560,000 people were affected, said @VP, @WhiteHouse and @PressSec were too, and that Twitter believed it had corrected all accounts.

Unfollowing them only lasts if nothing makes your account follow them again, so start with the cause:

1. 1

   Stop the source first

   Revoke the apps you don't use, remove the browser extensions you don't trust, and change your password. Otherwise the follows can come back.

2. 2

   Unfollow them, or block them

   That's what Twitter told people to do in 2010, and it still works. X doesn't notify the people you unfollow: does X notify when you unfollow someone?

3. 3

   Don't use a script, even for hundreds

   X's automation rules forbid unfollowing "in a bulk, aggressive, or indiscriminate manner", and say scripting the X website may get an account permanently suspended: how to mass unfollow without getting suspended.

We never follow or unfollow anyone from your account. The only thing we write on X is a DM, sent from our own account, @unfollowmonkey, to you.

On the Free plan, our setup asks you to follow @unfollowmonkey, because X may refuse our DMs otherwise. The setup page opens X's own follow page for our account, and you tap Follow yourself, on X.

Our Following page gives each account you follow an estimated follow date, newest first, if you follow no more than twice your plan's follower limit (4,000 on Free). We reread that list every second check, about every two months on Free and every two days on Kong, so a follow made after your first check gets a range between two readings: on Free, it tells you which two months an unwanted one appeared in. The accounts you already followed get a wider estimate, or read "Before" and your first check's date when we have nothing older to go on. We don't alert you about the accounts you follow: our DMs are about your followers, the ones who leave and the ones who come back.