TWITTER users could hardly believe their luck when Rupert Murdoch’s wife popped up on the social networking site, chatting cheerfully to all and sundry. Except it wasn’t her at all.
Loads of celebrities use Twitter but how can you be sure that the celebrity accounts you see there are the real thing?
A couple of years ago Twitter introduced the ‘Verified’ tick, a little blue symbol it adds to celebrity pages that have been checked to ensure their owners are really who they claim to be.
When that symbol appeared on an account claiming to be owned by Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi, it helped pull in thousands of new followers.
The media took Twitter’s word for it, too. As the fake Wendi cheerfully teased the real Rupert Murdoch on her Twitter feed, her taunts were re-tweeted and re-published everywhere.
It had to be the real Wendi, everyone assumed, because Twitter had verified the account.
Except the account was fake. Twitter’s verification was nothing of the sort.
Twitter later said: “We can confirm that the @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time and apologise for the confusion this caused.”
Twitter won’t say how the verification system is supposed to work.
That’s understandable, otherwise it would find itself swamped with requests.
That doesn’t stop plenty of people trying it on. Frequent attempts are made to set up accounts in the names of Doctor Who stars Karen Gillan and Matt Smith and the official Doctor Who Twitter account (which has been verified) sends out regular reminders saying neither of the two time travellers are on Twitter at all.
There’s an old joke on the internet: Nobody knows you’re a dog.
No-one can really be sure of anyone else’s identity and much has to be left to trust. So don’t always believe everything you read on Twitter – or anywhere else for that matter.
Giles Turnbull
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