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Celebrities Fighting Back Against Fake Twitter Profiles

by Terrence O'Brien on November 8, 2008 at 12:24 PM


Twitter, while fun and useful, has become a breeding ground for hacks who dream of becoming the next Fake Steve Jobs. Lance Armstrong, Britney Spears, and Al Gore have all recently joined the microblogging service and have had to reclaim their online identities.

Last month, Britney launched a new blog style site and snatched up therealbritney on Twitter. Now, Al Gore has been forced to act on his promise to join Twitter (he said he would in an interview several months ago) in order to thwart the attempts of TheRealAlGore to capitalize on his celebrity. Rumors were circulating that TheRealAlGore was in fact the real Al Gore, and the fake account racked up a couple of thousand followers very quickly. The real life Al Gore (confused yet?) acted quickly and launched his own account al_gore and confirmed its authenticity. TheRealAlGore lost a vast majority of his followers, and al_gore had amassed over 6,000 within a few days.

Lance Armstrong recently had to address a similar issue. Instead of simply drowning out the impostor who owned the lancearmstrong username on Twitter, Armstrong managed to gain control of the account, though whether it was through negotiation with the faker or through brute force on the part of Twitter administrators is not known.

It's good to see more high profile members of society joining and taking advantage of Twitter. We're waiting for the fake Biggie profile to force the Notorious B.I.G. to reveal he's still alive and well. [From: VatorNews and Mashable]

Tags: al gore, AlGore, britney spears, BritneySpears, lance armstrong, LanceArmstrong, twitter

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