Burger King recovering from Twitter hacking

The action saw Burger King’s profile picture on its US Twitter feed switched to its rival’s logo and various other alterations, including the suggestion that it had been sold to McDonald’s. The hijacking would seem to be a major embarrassment for Burger King, especially given its efforts to catch up with McDonald’s around the world. But in fact the stir it has created seems to have done it no harm, with more than 20,000 new followers signing up within hours of the news breaking.

Burger King suspended its account late on Monday (18 February), but was back a day later with the tweet: “Interesting day here at Burger King, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!” It added in a statement: “We apologise to our followers who have been receiving erroneous rewets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics.”

McDonald’s declined to take advantage of the situation, and tweeted: “We empathise with our @Burger King counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”

The hacking prompted a swirl of comments from fellow Twitter accounts, including some entertaining plays on the issue. But however amusing the incident, it does serve as a reminder to operators of the potential problems with security on platforms like Twitter. It has faced criticism of its security since the start of the month, when 250,000 users were warned that some of their information might have been caught by hackers.