I have a verified Twitter account. You can tell that because if you view my @gcluley Twitter profile you’ll see I have a tick after my name.
Some people mistakenly call it a blue tick. It isn’t a blue tick. It’s a white tick on a blue background, but don’t let my pedantry distract from the point I’m trying to make.
The purpose of having a verified account is to give other Twitter users some level of confidence that I really am who I say I am, and not someone pretending to be “Graham Cluley”. In Twitter’s own words, it “lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic.”
Of course, criminals might have an interest in compromising a verified Twitter account for that very reason. If they managed to hijack an account they could post tweets in the name of a person, and users might be fooled into believing that those tweets really did come from that person. This could be done for the purposes of spreading spammy links, political propaganda, or saying something that might embarrass the genuine owner of the account.
So it’s important that owners of verified accounts, just as with any other Twitter account, ensure that they have proper security measures in place to reduce the chances of getting hacked.
But what’s also important is that the owners of a verified Twitter account don’t themselves exploit their “blue tick” (there I go again…) to fool the public.
Indeed, Twitter’s own rules make clear that “intentionally misleading people on Twitter by changing one’s display name or bi ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
