Twitter validated a phony account for Norway's new Finance Minister, but it appears that Twitter is not to blame. According to Norwegian tech portal NRKbeta, the Prime Minister's Office and Norway's Security Authority (NSM) sent a false account for verification.
Twitter has verified a fake account portraying the Norwegian Minister of Finance, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum.
— Ståle Grut (@stalebg) November 22, 2021
The Norwegian Ministry of Finance confirms the story to news agency NTB: https://t.co/dcpINS9ZhS pic.twitter.com/U6MvNk93d0
Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, Norway's Finance Minister, has never had a Twitter account. According to the article, multiple false accounts mimicking Vedum have appeared since he was elected in September, so much so that the Ministry of Finance sent a tweet last month advising that the Minister of Finance does not have an account. "We wish to notify you that Minister of Finance Trygve Slagsvold Vedum does not have a private Twitter account," the translated post says. Accounts under his name are so fraudulent and will be reported."
What made this most recent bogus account stand out was that it was awarded a blue checkmark by Twitter. According to NRKbeta, Vedum's bogus account put forth tweets criticizing his political party's policy, likely ruffling some political feathers. However, Twitter does not appear to be to blame for the error – NRKbeta discovered that the Prime Minister's Office and the NSM were to blame.
"Unfortunately, there was an error in the reporting that resulted in the verification of a bogus account," Anne Kristin Hjuske, the Prime Minister's Office's head of communications, told NRKbeta. "The account has now been deactivated, and no additional fraudulent accounts have been validated." In addition, we are presently assessing our reporting procedures to guarantee that this does not occur again."
Following the recent election, the Prime Minister's Office and NSM were in charge of validating MPs' social media accounts. The bogus account allegedly fooled both companies, was submitted to Twitter, and then vanished.
"Out of nowhere, one of these false accounts turns up validated," The Verge's Stle Grut, the writer behind the NRKbeta post, explained. "It appears that whomever was handling the verification at the Prime Minister's Office was duped by the account, and it ended up being uploaded to Twitter along with the other newly appointed ministers, who are now all validated."
Twitter's verification procedure was recently modified in order to explicitly prevent the establishment of bogus accounts. After almost four years of upgrading the system, it reopened its verification process this past May, and then momentarily paused it after inadvertently validating numerous fraudulent accounts.
However, it appears that no matter how sophisticated Twitter's verification process becomes, it will never be able to defend against plain old human mistake. It is unclear if Twitter regularly outsources its verification procedure to third-party entities. If it does, it's especially dangerous for accounts belonging to high-profile government officials, as this blunder demonstrates.