Blaming hackers is an absolute classic of the ‘I’ve just shown my ass on the internet’ genre. Whether you’re a racist chiropractor or a health minister who appeared to be horny early on a Sunday morning, blaming devious cybercriminals is a solid go-to move. It’s one that Minister for Health Greg Hunt readily deployed after it became apparent that his Twitter account had liked a tweet from an account called ‘BBW CUM PUMPER 69‘ in December of last year. Unfortunately for Greg, when you’re a government minister, people tend to look into whether or not you’ve been hacked.
As the SBS is reporting, the Australian Federal Police looked into the matter at Hunt’s request to check for evidence of cyberwrongdoing and found no signs that his account had been “hacked in a criminal sense“.
AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin made the pronouncement in Senate estimates today, stating that the AFP had made contact with Twitter as part of their investigation.
Colvin said that it’s important that people know who has access to their Twitter accounts:
I think social media hygiene is an issue that we all need to be very conscious of. That is about who has access to your Twitter account, how many people have access, do you know who has access to your Twitter account.
It’s easy enough to like things by accident while scrolling on Twitter and there’s probably at least one other person (if not more) doing his socials for him, so there’s any number of ways that the tweet could have ended up there, but, at the same time: Greggy horney.
Just as an aside: while looking at articles about the original incident, I found this article from Yahoo, in which the writer has transcribed the name of the porn Twitter account as ‘BBW CUM PLUMBER 69‘, which has either made or ruined my day. I am still entirely unsure.
