Twitter whistleblower alleges fraud

Dana Malcolm

Staff Writer

#USA, August 26, 2022 – Fraud, threats to democracy and possible espionage are only some of the accusations being leveled at Twitter from a whistleblower at the company.  A document shared with congress and obtained by CNN  describes threats to everyday users and US national security because of mismanagement at the company.

The whistleblower in question, Peiter Zatko, is a former security lead at the company and was fired in January of this year by CEO Parag Agrawal.  Zatko is a famous US hacker who has held positions at Google and with the US Government.

He says not only is used data not reliably destroyed when users delete their accounts as is required, he has raised the possibility of spies from foreign intelligence agencies being in the company.

He also claims twitter has mislead the board about the extent of security threats. The revelations could not come at a worse time for Twitter. While it fights with Elon Musk in court about backing out of his $44 billion deal to buy the company over the number of bots on the social media site, Zatko claims not even Twitter knows how many bots there are, and he says the company does not care to look.

Musk is already capitalizing on the fallout, and his lawyers have subpoenaed Zatko to speak at the trial between Twitter and the SpaceX billionaire.

Twitter has an estimated 396 million users worldwide with five hundred million tweets on average being sent across the platform per day. What makes Twitter special in comparison to other major social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, is the inability to edit what has already been posted and its incredibly short 280-character limit, two characteristics that make the app popular for official updates from high level officials from the United Nations to the President of the United States.

So far Twitter has denied the allegations from Zatko, calling them sensationalist.