Twitter: Albert Rösti’s fake account reports the death of Adolf Ogi

Albert Rösti’s Twitter account looks official at first glance. The whole who’s who of the Swiss media industry follows him. If you take a closer look, you will notice that the account is neither verified nor really active. The only post was from December 7, where the account reported that this was Rosti’s official Twitter account. But that’s a fake: Albert Rösti confirms to 20 minutes that he doesn’t have a Twitter profile.

The fake account has only been showing activity since today: shortly after noon, the alleged Albert Rösti reported the death of the former President of the Republic of Kazakhstan on his account, referring to “diplomatic sources in Geneva”.

Shortly thereafter, this post was deleted and replaced by a new one: The Twitter account reports the death of former Federal Councilor Adolf Ogi: “Bad news. Former Federal President Adolf Ogi died of a heart attack a few minutes ago.”

According to Philippe Wampfler, social media expert, identity theft on Twitter is a well-known practice. “The profile was created a few weeks ago, but was inactive.” This makes it difficult for those affected to track down fake accounts of themselves. “It may well be that neither Rösti nor his team knew about this account.”

This is a well-known process in the crypto industry: “Fake accounts can build up a certain reach almost unnoticed before they even start tweeting. I am aware of cases where even profiles have been verified.”

The fake account is known to the Federal Chancellery: it intervened on Twitter last Friday and requested the account be deleted, as was communicated on request.