Regional councillor has Twitter account hacked
Posted Mar 27, 2023 08:00:00 PM.
Nobody's account is safe on social media.
Regional Councillor Colleen James told CityNews 570 in an interview that she discovered her Twitter was hacked – when she woke up Thursday morning to find herself logged out of her account. After James tried and failed multiple times to access her account, she checked her e-mails and saw one from Twitter stating her password had been changed.
“It literally took a minute,” said James. “It was 5:15 in the morning. If I were up, I potentially could have been able to stop it. It just happened really quickly.”
The last thing posted on her original account was on Wednesday, a retweet from the Region of Waterloo's page. James' new Twitter announced the hacking two days later on Friday, asking everyone to un-follow the compromised account and to not accept any requests or answer any messages.
Fortunately for James, she said she hasn't noticed any suspicious activity on the old account.
“That doesn't mean that there may not be at some point, so I am very conscious of that. I use that platform to engage with the public and learn what's happening within the region. The potential of somebody's voice acting as my voice is very real and present, and being an elected official, it makes it that much more of a concern.”
The regional councillor thought her status as an elected official would maybe be alarming to Twitter, but according to James, all of her efforts to report the hacking and have the account deleted have not resulted in any action yet from the social media company.
“People getting their accounts compromised is not uncommon,” said James. “It's quite frustrating to not hear back at all. It really doesn't leave a lot of faith in a lot of these social media platforms that depend on users, then when something happens, there's radio silence.”
On James' new Twitter account, she has also tweeted out a thank you to all her new followers and the other support she's got from the community offering help.
