Monday, January 9, 2012

Fake Wendi Deng Compromises Twitter Verification Process

About a week ago, media conglomerate Rupert Murdoch joined the Twitterverse. Not long after first tweeting, Murdoch tweeted a moderately offensive message: "Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!" Ironically, while on vacation in the Carribean. Soon after, @Wendi_Deng, presumably Murdoch's wife, tweeted at him to take the offending tweet down.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that @Wendi_Deng was not the real Wendi Deng, wife of Rupert Murdoch, but an imposter. However, it seems that the fake Deng wanted to teach Twitter a lesson on their verification process. "I was as surprised--and even a little alarmed--when I saw the Verified tick appear on the profile," the fake Deng wrote. "And you have to wonder even more why Twitter verified this account for a full day. I never received any communication from them about this. What verification process? That's what I'm saying. There was none. I was never contacted." Even more baffling, News Corp., a media company founded by Murdoch, accidentally confirmed the authenticity of the Twitter account to the U.K. Guardian.

Clearly, Twitter has been had. While they have not commented on the loophole in the verification process for new accounts, the social media platform did say, "We can confirm that the @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time and apologize for the confusion this caused."

What do you think? Has Twitter's verification process failed its users or simply made an easy mistake? Should the social media platform reevaluate its standards? Let us know!

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