“I have been hacked and my Twitter account has been erased,” begins a tweet sent from the verified @RepMaxineWatters Twitter account on Oct.12, 2021 at 11:55am ET.
“I know who has done this,” the post continues as it takes a sudden turn and gets all Liam Neeson-esque from the Taken series of films. “I will take care of this. M Waters.”
What in the world is going on here?
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The account, @RepMaxineWaters, is the official Twitter handle for Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the U.S. Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district. This is where the Democratic House member regularly posts updates. It would be a big deal if she was indeed hacked. It would be an even bigger deal if she knew the individual and it wasn’t some random attack by a hacker halfway across the world.
“I know who has done this. I will take care of this” – how ominous from an elected official! Who did it, Maxine?! WHO? Tell us!
But, here’s the weird thing…everything with the account seems fine?
The account is still there. The tweet claiming Rep. Waters was hacked is on the associated Twitter feed with her digital signature “M Waters” affixed to the end. You can scroll back in the account’s feed and see plenty of prior tweets. Looking at ProPublica’s Politwoops, which tracks public officials’ deleted tweets, not much from the @RepMaxineWaters account has been deleted recently aside from a couple random retweets that were removed yesterday.
Maybe she’s talking about a secondary account…perhaps the @MaxineWaters Twitter account which is used for her re-election campaigns? This account has barely been used since the 2020 election season but…it’s there along with all of its old tweets.
So, what is Rep. Maxine Waters talking about? Does she have an anonymous alt account? Was the account hacked and deleted and then subsequently restored by Twitter in record fast time? Or is this another case of a member of Congress being out of touch when it comes to technology?
The answer: We don’t know yet! We have a mystery on our hands here, folks!
Mashable has reached out to Rep. Waters’ office and Twitter to try and figure out what is going on.
Whatever happened, our thoughts and prayers are with whomever hacked Rep. Maxine Waters’ account or whomever she thinks hacked her account.
UPDATE: Oct. 12, 2021, 4:47 p.m. EDT A Twitter spokesperson provided the following statement to Mashable about the @RepMaxineWaters account:
“We can’t comment on the Tweet, but, as is standard, we have open lines of communication with her office and have worked with them to ensure the account is secure. At this time, we’ve identified no signs of account compromise.“
[Emphasis mine.]
So, this now begs the question: What the heck was Rep. Maxine Waters talking about in her tweet?
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