Jack Dorsey's social network has verified a fake account posing as Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, current Minister of Finance in Norway. The fault, in this case, is not Twitter, but the government of the Scandinavian country itself, which sent the request to the company to proceed with its verification, thinking that this was really the user of the deputy. The problem? Trygve Slagsvold Vedum does not have a Twitter profile.
The Norwegian portal NRKBeta has been able to confirm that it was the Prime Minister's office and the Norwegian security authority who asked Twitter to verify that account along with that of other new politicians. Both administrations have been in charge of carrying out this type of procedure since last September 13, when the last elections to Parliament were held.
Anne Kristin Hjuske, head of communications at the Prime Minister's Office, highlighted to the aforementioned media that it was “an error in the reports ” that caused that user to be verified. “The account has already been deleted and we have made sure that they have not been verified more,” he assures.
This time Twitter is not to blame
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash The bogus account in particular appeared to post tweets that contradicted its own party's policies , but no one seems to have noticed. NRKBeta mentions to The Verge that it may have been the user behind that profile who convinced the administrations to carry out the verification process. Presumably posing as the country's finance minister. Interestingly, the Norwegian Finance Department's own official profile confirmed that Trygve Slagsvold Vedum did not have a private account on the platform.
It is not the first time that Twitter has awarded the popular blue badge to an unofficial account. The company, remember, mistakenly verified several accounts that were part of a botnet and that they published tweets with links that redirected to malicious content. These, in particular, did not show any type of personal information and did not meet any of the requirements imposed by the platform. Alex Stamos, a former Facebook security director, sensed that users were verified by Twitter officials themselves, who may have received a bribe in return.
After the controversy, the social network decided to temporarily suspend the verification request process to make improvements to it. Currently, the form is already available to all users of the platform.
