Yahoo Finance Accounts posing as Dominic Raab and Liam Fox among Twitter takedowns
Twitter accounts masquerading as official outlets for Dominic Raab and Liam Fox were revealed as among those the UK government succeeded in shutting down after complaining to the social media company.
Details of complaints to Twitter by various departments about suspected fake accounts posing as original have been revealed by freedom of information requests from the Guardian, showing it has not always gone in favour of the UK government.
The Department of Health and Social Care has tried and failed to close down an account, @NHoS which has 16 followers and appears to belong to a woman in the city of St Louis, Missouri.
“We’ve researched the reported account and determined that it is not in violation of Twitter’s trademark policy,” Twitter told DHSC after the complaint was lodged.
In other cases however, Twitter has suspended a number of accounts for breaching rules on impersonation after complaints lodged by the Foreign Office.
One account, @UKAmbRichard, was pretending to be that of the UK ambassador to Turkey and appeared to have acquired some Twitter followers. Another, @SGSSIGov, appeared to be masquerading as the government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, a British overseas territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Both complaints were made last year by the Foreign Office, which also complained successfully to Twitter in 2017 about an account set up by the Russian broadcaster RT as part of a commemorative project for the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
The account, @BritshEmb1917, had been set up by RT and used an image of the Foreign Office’s official crest under a profile identifying it as “the official Twitter account of the United Kingdom in the Russian Empire”.
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In the UK, the Department for Transport took action twice last year against accounts pretending to be one of its branches. Twitter removed both accounts – @DVLAgov_uk and @DVLAgovuk2 – posed as associated with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which maintains a database of drivers in Britain.
The action against Twitter on behalf of Liam Fox was taken by his special advisers last year. The fake Dominic Raab accounts which the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) complained about were @DominicRab and @BrexitRaab.
According to DExEU, Twitter instructed the user of the latter account to make it clear that it was a parody. The account was removed and then recreated but had lost all its followers.
The Ministry of Defence has been particularly active. Last year, after MoD complaints Twitter removed @UKchiefofstaff, an account apparently pretending to be Gen Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the army’s chief of the general staff.
In 2017 Twitter suspended @gwilliamsonUK, an account named after the then defence minister. It initially ruled that another, @Roytalnavynews, was not in violation of policies but later suspended it, as it did with @RTHonMFallon, which used the name of another then defence secretary.
