Andhra Pradesh Industries Minister Mekapati Goutham Reddy on Saturday said his Twitter account has been hacked and unrelated messages were being posted. The Minister tweeted saying, "Viewers and followers kindly note that my official Twitter account @mekapatigoutham has been compromised by some unscrupulous elements and they are posting unrelated and offensive material."
He apologised to the general public and told them to ignore the fake tweets being shared from his account. Asianet Telugu reported that the Twitter account had tweeted pornographic material.
"Kindly ignore them and apologies for the inconvenience," said the Minister. Meanwhile, the Minister has lodged a complaint with the cybercrime police about the incident. Reddy used to deliver several official messages as well, using this social media account.
NOTE:
— Mekapati Goutham Reddy Official (@MekapatiGoutham) April 10, 2021
Viewers & followers kindly note that my Official Twitter account @MekapatiGoutham has been compromised by some unscrupulous elements & they are posting unrelated & offensive material.Kindly ignore them & apologies for the inconvenience. Filing a complaint with @APPOLICE100
Earlier, in March this year, the official Twitter account of Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, state minister of Food, Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Cottage Industry was hacked by unknown persons. The unknown persons tweeted that cryptocurrencies were being given away and had also mentioned a web link. A police case was registered against unknown persons for the cybercrime.
In September 2020, the Twitter account of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's personal website with over 2.5 million users was also breached. The hackers had tweeted asking people to donate cryptocurrency to the PM National Relief Fund.
The same year also saw Twitter accounts of multiple celebrities, politicians, tech leaders and major companies being hacked in an apparent Bitcoin scam. The ruse included bogus tweets from former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Celebrities Kanye West and his former wife, Kim Kardashian, also had their Twitter accounts hacked. The fake tweets offered to send $2,000 for every $1,000 sent to an anonymous Bitcoin address.
In 2016, the Twitter account of Rahul Gandhi, the Congress vice president was also hacked and disparaging remarks about Rahul and the Gandhi family were tweeted. <>(With IANS inputs)