MTN, South Africa’s second-biggest mobile phone operator, is trying to distance itself from a fake Twitter account that was getting a lot of attention.
MTN fell victim to an imposter that added a barely noticeable underscore to @MTNza and then started insulting MTN subscribers.
MTN said on Wednesday that it has noted a parody social media account that masquerades as an official MTN twitter account.
“The reported response from this account to an MTN customer, which MTN regards as insensitive was not sanctioned by MTN. We urge our customers to disregard this Twitter handle as it is not an official MTN Twitter handle but a parody account that was opened and shut down in 2016,” said MTN in a statement.
Satirical Twitter accounts are nothing new.
Approximately six parody accounts purporting to be MTN Twitter handles have been opened since 2013. Twitter has suspended some of these accounts while others became inactive after being discovered.
The company said it has contacted the customers that have received feedback from these accounts and advised of that fact.
This week, we also identified another parody account called https://twitter.com/MTNCare_ZA which has been reported to Twitter for suspension.
