14 DAY TRIAL // If you’re using Twitter at least as much as we do, you might have noticed that a new account which claims to belong to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is quickly gaining a lot of followers, as people believe that it’s actually the man who has been in charge of the Redmond giant for 13 years that’s posting right now.
Unfortunately for all those who hoped to finally have a chance to chat with Steve Ballmer, this account is fake and actually belongs to someone who tried to clone multiple legitimate accounts and get verified by Twitter.
An in-depth look at the @MicrosoftSteve account posted by Owen Williams reveals that the man behind the account is actually Arturas Rosenbacher, who has until now created plenty of fake accounts in an attempt to trick people into believing that they’re interacting with the real people and, in the end, convince Twitter that the service needs to verify these accounts.
His strategy, however, seems to be very well thought and in some cases, he got really close to getting verified by Twitter.
The first tweet of the new @MicrosoftSteve account actually contained a selfie, along with a message that tricked many into believing that Ballmer is actually posting the message, “Thanks for having me @Twitter! Guess I'm supposed to start with a #selfie, right?”
Thanks for having me @Twitter! Guess I'm supposed to start with a #selfie, right? pic.twitter.com/Ivcas8gn2T
— Steve Ballmer (@MicrosoftSteve) April 18, 2014
Mission accomplished, as many have actually been convinced that Ballmer is back to Twitter, including former Windows boss Steven Sinofsky.
Nonetheless, Wiliams notes that the selfie the fake account posted actually belongs to another Microsoft employee, so the picture was stolen from his account and clearly wasn’t made by Steve Ballmer himself.
“I discovered late today that the selfie the account tweeted was actually one Guillaume Faou who works at Microsoft and took the picture himself, meaning it had to be lifted from his profile since the real Steve Ballmer wouldn’t have ever had the photo,” he wrote.
Many of the fake accounts that we’ve told you about have already been banned by Twitter, but the @MicrosoftSteve username continues to exist right now and more people are actually following it. Of course, some top Microsoft executives and Bill Gates himself are missing from this list, which could be a clear sign that we’re actually dealing with a fake account.
Still waiting for some clarification on this and to see whether Twitter bans this account as well or not, so we’ll update this article as more details are provided.
Update: Twitter has now suspended the account, but you can check the first tweet by clicking on the header image at the top of the article.