05 January,2012 04:37 PM IST | | Agencies
The verification process of micro blogging website Twitter has come under fire after a user who created the fake account in the name of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng, claimed that it was marked 'verified' without him being contacted.
Both Murdoch's and 'Deng's' accounts received a blue tick from the service, which is only given to high profile people to denote that the account is genuine.
However, despite carrying a tick for a couple of days, Twitter subsequently removed the blue icon from the @Wendi_Deng account.
The anonymous tweeter, who lives in London, told The Telegraph, that Twitter had failed to get in touch with him before, during or after they wrongly verified the account.
"Twitter never got in touch either before verifying, after verifying, or after realising their mistake. I have asked them to DM [direct message] me, email me, etc to explain what happened. They haven't," the paper quoted the user, as saying.
u00a0The faker 'Wendi Deng' also admitted that neither News International nor anyone from Murdoch's office had been in touch with him, despite the press team at NI having confirmed the Wendi Deng account was genuine to several journalists.
"There seems to be a desire/need for me to BE somebody - an aspiring comedian, a journalist, someone on a mission to trip up Twitter or NI [News International]," the user said as he refused to disclose his identity.
"I'm not. I'm just an average Twitter user with, perhaps, a bit more intelligence about social media than some. That's it," he added.
The hoax tweeter also explained that it was a coincidence that just after '@Wendi_ Deng' told @rupertmurdoch to delete a tweet about the British having too many holidays, that the tweet was then deleted.
He said he would shut down the fake account, which attracted over 10,000 followers in several hours, "soon", but he plans to keep it active for a bit longer.
