From the news desk

Nizaam’s Twitter account hacked

Share this article

Rugby star Nizaam Carr has fallen victim to a disturbed hacker, who posted a string of tweets from his Twitter account expressing his support for the Islamic State on Wednesday. DHL Stormers immediately announced that his Twitter account @NizaamCarr08 had been hacked and was shut down with immediate effect. The loose forward’s Twitter page was also hacked the day before.

“Unfortunately Nizaam Carr’s Twitter account was hacked and, ultimately, taken over by someone who was responsible for a series of vitriolic posts via Nizaam’s account – unbeknown to Nizaam,” read a statement by WP Rugby.

“This person who hacked Nizaam’s account then also managed to lock Nizaam out of his own account – thereby not allowing him to delete any of those posts or, crucially, to deactivate the account with immediate effect.”

The first tweet read: “I support Isis”, followed five minutes later by “Isis should invade everywhere and be in command, Allahu Akbar”.   A few other tweets followed.

Fortunately, many Twitter followers immediately questioned the validity of the statements, with many tweeting in support of the young player.

Through the SA Rugby Communications Department, WP Rugby got in touch with a representative of Twitter who is based abroad. The social media platform’s technical team were able to regain control of the account and shut it down shortly before 20h00 on Thursday night.

“It initially happened on Wednesday night with a few posts but it was immediately sorted out via a password change. However, it began again on Thursday afternoon and it escalated rather quickly thereafter,” they stated.

“On both occasions of the account being hacked Nizaam was the first to inform us of the matter and the official DHL Stormers Twitter handle reacted swiftly to inform members of the public that Nizaam was not in any way responsible for any of the tweets.

“Thereafter, the WP Rugby media and marketing department were on hand to help further defuse the situation and eventually – after some four hours – delete the offensive tweets and, importantly, shut the account down.”

WP Rugby said it was “an unfortunate matter” which caused the player some “very unnecessary anguish”.

“It is very sad that there are people out there who are capable of doing this, but we are just glad that it is now behind us.” VOC

 


Share this article

2 comments

  1. Common error – but it’s not “diffuse”the situation …it’s “defuse”

    “Diffuse” means you make things worse by spreading it.
    “Defuse” means you eliminate the problem.

    They mean opposite things 😉

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

WhatsApp WhatsApp us
Wait a sec, saving restore vars.