I have disappeared

Hi Mark. Whilst I was away (in Ireland, I live in England) the tweets to my mobile stopped. I thought this may be different phone carrier / sp or something. This weekend (sunday 01/06) on return, I got emails from friends saying I had disappeared from their lists too.

Now the odd things:

I received an email alert for direct message from a follower - I replied to the message directly from the link in the email successfully - from my original account

yet Twitter would not recognise the user name and email address if I tried to log in

I now have my user name working - as a result of sending the direct message maybe - but all my followers and following lists were empty, and my pic, and profile stripped out.

I have started to rebuild these lists and profile again. But this is all time consuming and confusing for ppl who think they are following me anyway .....

What happened - how can I get my contacts list back? I read of a database issue last week - was I a victim of this.

And worryingly - what precautions are there - from twitter and that a 'customer' (ie us) can take to prevent being removed like this - is there a backup anywhere?

Loving the simplicity and usability of twitter - for social and business use - but not happy at the moment

Details - username = martinbrown email = [removed for privacy reasons]