Trump Twitter: Gmail Account Linked Posed Social Media Security Threat To POTUS
President Donald Trump’s Twitter profile was apparently linked to a personal Gmail account which could have exploded into a social media nightmare for the new POTUS. For presidents in the past, and more so for U.S. presidents preceding Barack Obama, the internet age and social media as we now know it posed little risk to national security.
Fortunately, the potential Trump Twitter/Gmail catastrophe was averted when, according to USA Today, an unnamed hacker first reported by TV Guide discovered that the POTUS’ had linked his new “Twitter account to what appeared to be the personal Gmail account of White House social media director Dan Scavino.”
The 2016 campaign and Trump’s election victory have highlighted not only the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information via a private email server, but also the U.S. Intelligence Department’s report of Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s database and subsequent attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. Those revelations, combined with Trump’s penchant for using Twitter as the unofficial platform for his policy motivations make the potential for a security threat disaster so relevant had an outside source hacked the Trump Twitter/Gmail login credentials for the account.
Imagine for a moment….
A dangerous tweet from the hacked account could hold the weight of some of Trump’s past social media musings. Realistically, it would only take a matter of minutes before security teams within the White House to notice that something was awry or that the Trump Twitter feed had been illegally accessed via Gmail, but the embarrassment alone would hurt the administration, let alone the immediate backlash from those on Twitter who hang an every character of Trump’s tweets. Or worse yet, what if a hacker waged a diplomatic war in less than 140 characters?
To clarify, however, the Trump Twitter Gmail snafu occurred in relation to his new official handle, @POTUS, which to date has 14.4 million “followers” and not to his previous handle, @realDonaldTrump, which he still uses unofficially to the tune of 22.5 million followers. Apparently the official POTUS account was handed over to Mr. Scavino, who designated that posts would be generated by him and not Trump, unless the tweets were signed- DJT.
The entire prospect of a Trump Twitter Gmail security breach has engendered a recollection of Mrs. Clinton’s public scandal over official state correspondence via an unsecured server, posing a risk to classified documents during her tenure as Barack Obama’s Secretary of State and reckoned political backlash for the POTUS’ new administration, who, during the campaign, rallied to “lock up” Mrs. Clinton for crimes against the state.
Barack Obama wanted to be the first president to bring the White House and U.S. government into the digital age, and was allowed to use only a government “secured” smart phone with many features disabled, including photo and audio recording, ensuring that an outside source couldn’t hack the president official private conversations and possible location.
The Trump Twitter Gmail brush fire has been flamed because Mr. Trump has admitted to not using the internet profusely, and has been mocked for continuing to use an outdated Blackberry smartphone on a daily basis. As recently as two days ago, the New York Times reported the following.
Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, went back to New York on Sunday night with their 10-year-old son, Barron, and so Mr. Trump has the television — and his old, unsecured Android phone, to the protests of some of his aides — to keep him company. That was the case after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump appeared to be reacting to Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News
The president allegedly watched a Fox news pundit investigate violence in Chicago and tweeted from his personal account, threatening to “send in the Feds”.
[Featured Image By Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images]
