Twitter CFO Anthony Noto’s account hacked, sends spam messages
11 Feb 2015
Twitter CFO Anthony Noto, once again fell victim to his company's own service, after a spammer took control of his Twitter account, following a hack.
ibtimes.co.uk reported, Noto's account told its 13,400 followers: "I can't stop laughing...this pic of you is so funny lol...I can't stop laughing!...OMG when did you do this?"
The tweets were received at several other accounts and included links to Flashscore, a website for live sports scores. The links were later deleted even as Twitter suspended Noto's account, before allowing him to regain access.
Noto however is known for not being savvy about Twitter and in November 2014, in an embarrassing slip sent a tweet to his followers: "I still think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 - we will need to sell him. I have a plan." Noto apparently confused Direct Messages with public tweets.
The tweet, which presumably discussed a potential acquisition, was deleted soon after it was sent, however the following day Noto tweeted "No just limited" publicly then quickly deleted it.
Meanwhile, AFP reported that Noto's account @anthonynoto for a brief time fired off terse, slangy missives inviting people to click on a link that promised funny video or other reward, depending on the post.
The news agency quoted a Twitter spokesperson as saying his account was sending spam Tweets and the company had locked the account down and deleted the tweets.
The spokesperson added there was no indication any of Noto's account information was accessed.
Rogue posts in Twitter accounts could be attributed to hackers, though, they could also be caused by bugs in third-party applications intended to work with the one-to-many messaging service, San Francisco-based Twitter said.