On Wednesday night, the official Twitter account of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi started sending out weird tweets, many of them abusive and obscene.
https://twitter.com/DelhiTweeter/status/803980955077767168
It is not for the first time that some high profile Twitter account was hacked, the most notorious being the account of news agency Associated Press being hacked, which falsely tweeted about an attack on the White House. That even caused brief panic in the markets.
Recently in the run up to the US Presidential elections, Twitter account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta was hacked. There have been many such instances when celebrities or organisations have been targeted by hackers.
Back in India, Rajdeep Sardesai had, in all probability, falsely claimed about his Twitter account being hacked in April this year when he sent out obscene abuses to many users, while recently government’s Chief Economic Adviser’s Twitter account was reportedly hacked, which again we think was more of a case of some malware than hacking.
Basically, hacking of Twitter accounts or emails is not a rare phenomenon. Most of the times it happens due to a user not being alert and aware enough to secure his or her account. Apart from using a strong password, people should use mobile authentication to login and avoid clicking suspicious links. There are many other things you can do such as these to secure yourself online.
One can blame a particular platform if there is mass hacking and credentials of users are leaked in bulk, as has happened on occasions with different websites, but hacking of a single user’s account is more an indictment of that particular user rather than of the platform or the system.
Therefore, if everyone’s Twitter account is safe, but Rahul Gandhi’s account gets hacked, people have to ask the team handling Rahul Gandhi’s online presence rather than attacking Twitter or by extension attacking the digital world.
However, this simple fact was lost, or deliberately missed, by supporters and leaders of the Congress party, who tried to attack everyone and everything for the hacking, except Rahul Gandhi’s office.
These leaders and supporters blamed BJP, Digital India, cashless economy, and even demonetisation because Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account was not secure enough. Look at some of such tweets:
https://twitter.com/drajoykumar/status/803987042531053568
https://twitter.com/royabhijit71/status/803984530818342912
https://twitter.com/JhaSanjay/status/803990717366288385
https://twitter.com/priyankac19/status/803982762742943745
https://twitter.com/rssurjewala/status/803992722658889728
https://twitter.com/prashantpawar1/status/803992001368719360
https://twitter.com/AnshuChhibber/status/803995190751035392
So where these tweets out of political naivety knavery or digital illiteracy?
Or was it all planned? You decide.
https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/803989007420026880
https://twitter.com/Jal_Kukdi/status/803988975358803968
https://twitter.com/dhaval241086/status/803995338935771137
https://twitter.com/iAnkurSingh/status/803996052638564352
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