Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Twitter Admits Verifying Fake @Wendi_Deng Was a Mistake

Twitter Admits Verifying Fake @Wendi_Deng Was a Mistake

On Tuesday morning, the world learned that the account bearing media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s wife’s name, Wendi Deng Murdoch, is not run by her or anyone connected to her.

And less than two hours after the revelation, Twitter admitted in a tweet that it had mistakenly verified the @Wendi_Deng account (see tweet below), causing users to poke fun at the legitimacy of Twitter’s verification process.

We can confirm that the @Wendi_Deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time and apologize for the confusion this caused.

The impostor sent these tweets between 9 and 10 a.m. ET calling out Twitter on its blunder.

Hello Twitter. As News International has finally come to their senses, it's time to confirm that yes, this is a fake account. I'm not Wendi.

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.

But I'm definitely not married to Rupert Murdoch.

News Corporation original told a few media outlets the Deng account was legit, but the company backpedaled and that’s when the fake Deng came clean in the above series of tweets.

Mashable had previously reported that “an unverified account” using Deng’s full name had persuaded the News Corporation CEO to delete an insulting tweet. Shortly after the exchange, the tweet went missing from his accurately verified Twitter account.

Murdoch joined Twitter on New Year’s Eve and has since accumulated more than 90,000 followers.

Do you think this incident shows a major hole in Twitter’s verification process? Sound off in the comments.


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