14 DAY TRIAL // A few hours ago, the world learned that the Roman Catholic Church had a new leader. Shortly after it was announced that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, or Pope Francis I, had been elected, posts published on a fake Twitter account were quickly picked up.
The @JMBergoglio account has been suspended, but when it was online, it attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. However, the fake account didn't have anything to do with the new pope and the posts published on it are clear proof.
“If I’m going to be the new pope, kids are going to love me more than Santa Claus,” read one of the messages.
The worst part, as The Slate highlights, is that representatives of major media organizations, including Reuters, have started spreading the word about the posts from the Pope’s “personal” account.
Sophos Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley makes an interesting point about such scams. While there were no malicious links contained in the posts, the expert highlights the fact that cybercriminals could have caused some serious damage.
“There is a serious security-related side to this of course. No doubt some of the people following this account might believe that it really does belong to the new Pope. And if whoever runs the account had bad intentions they could easily attempt to spread spam or post malicious links to their huge, and newly-won, following,” Cluley noted.
“And, as we all know, cybercriminals love to take advantage of a hot news story to spread attacks and dupe people into clicking on links without thinking.”
Remember, the Pope is on Twitter, but he doesn’t have a “personal” account. The official account is @Pontifex, from which one official tweet has already been published.