The Stranger reported on April 23, 2012, that the Associated Press (AP) Twitter account was hacked Tuesday morning.
The following false information was tweeted by the @AP account, "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured." Sam Hananel tweeted soon after, "Please Ignore AP Tweet on explosions, we've been hacked."
Soon after three of the top 10 Twitter United States Trends were "The AP", "White House" and "The Associated Press". The Twitter account of Anonymous, @YourAnonNews, shared the erroneous AP Tweet and has been retweeted over 500 times so far.
It appears that Twitter has also suspended the AP Twitter account as well according to The Stranger, "UPDATE 10:20 AM: The AP's entire Twitter account, according to Twitter, has been suspended."
Events like this one are very alarming and have a greater impact than in the past, as more people turn to social media first for their news. Social networks are moving ahead of traditional media especially in the case of "breaking" or fluid situations like the recent Boston Marathon bombing.
What do you think Twitter security? Please drop in your comments below.
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