Hastily upgrading

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

PBS News has a startling little item:

The @POTUS twitter account, one of the White House’s main social media accounts, appears to be controlled by a user with a personal gmail account, the PBS NewsHour has confirmed.

They took a screen shot:

This screenshot, taken at 12:47 p.m. ET on Jan. 26, 2017 shows that the @POTUS account is linked to a Google Gmail account beginning with the letters "ds." Minutes after this screen shot was captured, the account reset process was changed.

Oh well. It’s only the president.

The Next Web first reported on the apparent vulnerability of several accounts associated with the new White House earlier today. The finding was widely shared on Twitter by technology journalists.

In addition to being linked to a personal gmail account, the Twitter account appeared to have the lowest possible level of security, foregoing settings that would require a user to enter additional personal information to reset the password on the account.

As we put together this report, the account appeared to be in the process of upgrading to a higher level of security.

I hear a faint cry somewhere out in the ether…emaaaaaaaaaaails

 

Comments

8 responses to “Hastily upgrading”

  1. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    But…Hillary…personal server…deleted….Benghazi…something….something…something…Crooked Hillary…

  2. The Great God Pan Avatar
    The Great God Pan

    Only 39% of Trumpanzees think he should not be allowed to have a private e-mail server, according to Public Policy Polling.

  3. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    I hate to sound so surprised (I’m not surprised), but Trump’s people truly have no integrity? They don’t care what’s true, and they don’t know what’s true. Hell, 15% of them say the Trump inauguration photo shows more people than the photo of Obama’s 2009 inauguration. We’re all partisan, I guess, and prone to tribalistic thinking. But these people… do they have anything other than partisanship?

  4. Rob Avatar
    Rob

    Ben, no.

    I say “Lock him up!” :-)

    Also, enjoy the laugh https://twitter.com/georgetakei/status/820666799830208512?lang=en

  5. Blood Knight in Sour Armor Avatar
    Blood Knight in Sour Armor

    Yeah, just wait ’til PBS is sold to Steve Bannon…

  6. Stewart Avatar
    Stewart

    The Independent also assumes what I did, that it’s Dan Scavino.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/donald-trump-twitter-potus-gmail-email-google-personal-account-hillary-clinton-a7548216.html

  7. AJ Milne Avatar
    AJ Milne

    Well, it _is_ a concern…

    I mean, just imagine if some nutbar extremist were to take over that account…

    (Blinks…)

  8. guest Avatar
    guest

    And then you’ve got press dude tweeting his password:

    http://www.snopes.com/2017/01/26/sean-spicer-twitter-his-password/#!

    L33t!

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