Jun 8, 2009

Twitter Blog: Not Playing Ball

More on the Twitter identity front. According to the Twitter blog, Twitter is launching a beta program for verifying account holders. I'm not sure how they'll deal with all the John Smith's of the cyberworld. I guess as long as you don't pretend to be someone or entity that you are not then it's on a "first come" basis. Does that mean my favorite @MarsPhoenix will be shut down? ;-) Likely not.

Impersonation violates Twitter's Terms of Service and we take the issue seriously. We suspend, delete, or transfer control of accounts known to be impersonation. When alerted, we took action in this regard on behalf of St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa.

Bottom line, if you think someone is impersonating you on Twitter, complain to tech support and they will shut down the impostor.

Twitter Blog: Not Playing Ball

3 comments:

Ed Brill said...

True for a person, not for an entity.

http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/twitter-impersonation-terms-of-service-violation-help

Karen Hobert said...

Interesting twitter twist from Ed. Thanks for sending me your story. The blog post does say the "experiment" will start with individuals:

"The experiment will begin with public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other well known individuals at risk of impersonation."

But concedes that business and entities are also an issue:

"Initially, verification will not be tested with businesses. However, we do see an opportunity in that arena so we'll keep you posted when we have something to share."

Remember the first well publicized Twitter impersonation controversy was with an entity, CNN. I hope in your situation that they become more responsive to Ed's type of situation.

IdoNotes said...

Actually it applies to companies also, but not as fast moving. Companies like Six Flags were able to recover their accounts recently.