Excellent work by the Evolve Politics site has identified a phenomenon that may indicate preparations for a slew of false complaints against Corbyn-supporting Twitter-users.
The ploy involves ‘cloning’ accounts in order to make them look like a particular authentic account, but using a capital ‘i’ instead of a lower-case ‘L’, making screenshots of the fake account’s tweets virtually indistinguishable from those of the genuine, copied account. Evolve tweeted a number of examples to illustrate how easily this can be done:
Evolve have had reports indicating that Corbyn-supporting Labour members are having their Twitter accounts cloned in order to grab screenshots of abuse.
If you have a lower-case 'l' (L) in your Twitter handle, the cloners are replacing the "l" with an upper case "i".
Please RT pic.twitter.com/BYeJ49HFTa
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) August 27, 2018
Such false accounts could be used to make abusive tweets and used as supposed evidence in a complaint.
If you have an ‘L’ in your account name, you could be vulnerable to this kind of attack – and you need to check that no ‘clones’ already exist. If not, the best protection is to set up Twitter accounts for any variants yourself so no one else can take them.
And of course, if your handle has a capital ‘i’ in it, the same effect could be achieved by a lower-case ‘L’, as a commenter has pointed out.
If anyone thinks of other possible variations that might be equally indistinguishable, mention them in the comments on this article.
Of course, any account is vulnerable to photoshopping of fake tweets, but the cloned accounts would have the added realism of generating actual traffic if anyone retweets, quote-tweets, likes them etc.
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Yes when Jeremy hammered the Right twice in Leadership contests and Labour stood for something again I joked (quoting Brecht) that the Right needed “To find a new public” (membership) and perhaps this is their end game – expulsions?
They perhaps also need to try to keep the ‘Labour’ brand name to ensure the continuence of rewarding careers and possible nice consultancies when they retire (?) and then the top down ‘Great Men and Women of History’ (without an original idea in their heads?) believe they just have to try to keep working people passive whilst offering a few crumbs now and then?
But perhaps working people are sick of this and the progressive genie hopefully is out of the bottle?
We can still win with organisation and IDEAS and the Right’s vapidity concerning the latter is perhaps their intellectual weakness.
Movements also usually make history and we are a movement behind JC whilst opportunists can only practice Dark Arts and use procedural tactics because they know no better.
We shall overcome!
I was under the impression Twitter had every member’s email address?
Surely that would lead to the user’s IP address and identity – or lack of it – and point to the tweeter’s true affiliation?
Even if not, technology moves on and those not caught today may be caught tomorrow, hopefully losing some position as a consequence.
And Twitter is doing nothing about this?
It shows how sick some people are. They need help!
Meanwhile just read on the Morning Star site the Right Wing US Barbarians (in support of the Right Wing Barbarian Govt in Israel) have cut aid to the UN’s UNRWA from £260m to £46m which is likely to mean schools for Palestinian kids could be closing in September.
The Right Wing US Barbarians and those in Israel want Palestinian refugees to fade away and to end their Right to Return.
As Naura Eraket argued so (The Right Wing Israeli Govt) can “maintain its religious, ethnic and economic supremecy ” (all of course coutesy of the USA).
A Right to Return for refugees could mean all citizens in the region could work out if they can live together or if they cannot then if they can live as two neighbouring states?
It could be argued the Right to Return could bring peace.
As the Barbarians look for bigger fish to produce in defence of the indefensible (spoiler alert it could be Moses next) perhaps:
“Those the Gods wish to destroy first they make mad” (?)
Yours in peace.