OPINION | EDITORIAL: Another strike against Twitter

Of all the stories in the last week . . . . Of all the stories in 2020 . . . . This one is just of a piece.

It turns out that somebody besides the president of the United States and his staff had the president's Twitter password. And used it. A Netherlands television station, RTL Nieuws, interviewed a Dutch man who guessed the president's Twitter password and used it to gain access to his account. Here's more from the story:

"The Twitter account @realDonaldTrump of U.S. President Donald Trump has been hacked by a Dutchman. Trump used the password 'maga2020!' (make america great again) and would not have put in place additional security. The Dutchman is ethical hacker Victor Gevers, who has already reported many thousands of data leaks and other vulnerabilities on the Internet. It took him seven attempts to guess the password of the American president."

At the very least, we know the president is as unoriginal in his passwords as most of us. Putting years and an exclamation point is pretty typical when making a new password. But it's not a great habit.

If the president didn't use his Twitter account to communicate directly with the nation and announce things like virus test results, firings and national policy, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. But as America exhaustingly knows after four years, this is a man who lives on Twitter.

Password protocol is important in 2020, especially when the FBI is announcing that hostile nations like Iran and Russia have American voter data. So the president's social media accounts need to be locked down better.

Perhaps the most distressing part of this story is the president apparently didn't have two-step verification enabled on his Twitter account. How can you not in this day and age?

Fortunately, this was a benevolent hacker who was just probing the account for security purposes. These kinds of hackers are often called "white hats." They try to find security flaws and report them to companies or important people so bad hackers--black hats--can't use the account for nefarious purposes.

The Dutch television station did report that the president has since changed his password and turned on two-step authentication. It's a good lesson for us all. Lock those accounts down. There are too many bad actors out there looking to do harm.

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