Reportedly, the Twitter handle of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website and mobile app was hacked in the wee hours of this morning, the social media giant has confirmed. Twitter further mentioned that it has taken “steps to secure the compromised account” and is “actively investigating” the situation.
The account reportedly disseminated tweets urging followers to contribute to the PM National Relief Fund via cryptocurrency. The account bears the handle name narendramodi_in and has 2.5 million followers and over 37,000 tweets since its inception in May 2011.
“We’re aware of this activity and have taken steps to secure the compromised account. We are actively investigating the situation. At this time, we are not aware of additional accounts being impacted,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.
The last tweet came from the account was on August 31. The tweet bears a quote of PM Modi from his monthly radio programme “Mann Ki Baat”. Regular updates from the Prime Minister’s speeches and other programmes are tweeted from @narendramodi_in.
The incident gets reported after several Twitter accounts of prominent personalities were hacked in July.
PM Modi’s personal Twitter account, which remained unaffected by this incident, has over 61 million followers. The account – @narendramodi – was created in January 2009. He uses Twitter extensively to reach out to people and share important information and updates.
In a similar turn of events, hackers had in July accessed Twitter’s internal systems to hijack some of the platform’s top voices including US presidential candidate Joe Biden, former US President Barack Obama, billionaire Elon Musk, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and used them to solicit digital currency.