Faux Twitter account for Virginia State Police taken down – The Virginian
August 1, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
By Jordan Fifer
An account on the social networking website Twitter was suspended after the user apparently masqueraded as a representative of the Virginia State Police, the agency said.
The Twitter account @VaStatePolice seemed realistic, with the official seal of the agency as its profile picture and a description of the force as its personal information. The account linked to the state police website.
But the faux profile wasn’t run by the Virginia State Police, so the agency asked Twitter to remove the account, said Corinne Geller, a state police spokeswoman.
“It came to our attention when we had a reporter here in Richmond ask us about something we tweeted,” Geller said. “To look at it, one would think it was legitimate. But it was not.”
No apparent harm came of the impostor account, Geller said. The tweets, or posts, were mostly links to actual agency news releases and were truthful.
The account had nearly 130 followers before it was suspended. Several news outlets and public safety organizations were duped into believing it was real, Geller said.
Geller said she doesn’t know who was behind the account. State police employees are prohibited from operating such social networking profiles without authorization.
The state police doesn’t have an active Twitter account, Geller said, though they’ve registered a user name should they later wish to start a presence on the network. The agency does keep a page on Facebook, where nearly 28,000 people have signed up to receive updates.
