14 DAY TRIAL // Someone managed to impersonate United States Congressman Steny H. Hoyer on Twitter by registering the former username associated with his account.
Yesterday, while President Obama was giving the annual State of the Union Address, sarcastic comments were being posted from @LeaderHoyer, a Twitter ID used by Congressman Hoyer when he held the role of Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives.
Hoyer, who has been serrving without interruption as the U.S Representative for Maryland's 5th congressional district since 1981, was elected recently as House Minority Whip, at which time he changed his Twitter username to @WhipHoyer.
However, according to ZDNet, people in charge of his social media presence forgot to also update the Twitter link displayed on his congressional website to reflect the change.
Someone realized the oversight and on January 14th, re-registered the formerly "verified" @LeaderHoyer account and tried to make it look legit.
The profile displayed a photo of Congressman Hoyer taken from his Wikipedia page and suggested in the description that it is his personal account, @WhipHoyer being for official business.
In the stream of rogue tweets the impersonator even wrote: "this is what happens when political offices pay for high-priced, money-sucking 'social media' firms that have no clue what they are doing."
Since the incident, the @LeaderHoyer account has been suspended and the Twitter link on hoyer.house.gov has been updated to reflect the congressman's new profile, which has over 5,700 followers.
Security experts have warned users about the risks associated with changing usernames on Twitter in the past, but the danger of impersonation is bigger when the persons making the switch are public figures.
In the absence of a Twitter option to lock old IDs, people should consider re-registering them after switching, setting them to private and directing people to the new ones via the "bio" summary.