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User Claims Twitter “Stole” Their Account
Over the past year there have been a few stories about Twitter accounts and fights over ownership. Today via Twitter user NinjaMonk we’ve learned about another user who has lost one of their accounts. The Twitter account in question is "VirginMedia" and was owned by user Foomandoonian (real name: Geoff).
Geoff notes, "today I have just noticed that the page has been ‘claimed’ – presumably by Virgin Media itself. The page has been wiped clean: zero followers, zero following, zero updates. Zero bad Google karma." He also continues explaining that Twitter was never in contact with him and concludes with, "If I felt I had any rights to the name, and I had a real use for it, it would be a very different matter."
If Twitter continues to grow, these type of trademark and usage issues will continue to rise. All of the new social services will face the same issues as they grow as well. I’d be interested to see Twitter post a list of open trademark claims on Twitter accounts. I’ve emailed the Twitter team to understand what occured in this VirginMedia case and will update this post once I hear back.
I hope you hear back from them. All of my attempts to get answers or responses from anyone connected with Twitter have been unsuccessful. They need to hire some PR/Customer Service staff instead of relying on Get Satisfaction to address user issues and questions.
It’s interesting to hear so many people talking about Twitter-squatting and now hearing about events like this. I’ve heard several mentions of Twitter reclaiming profiles on behalf of companies with a real claim to the name, but I find it strange they would do it without notifying or consulting the current owner.
To be fair you have to consider the point of view of both sides of the fence. There are people that are taking Twitter account using registered or trademarked names with the sole intent of exploiting in a very unfair way those names. We as Glossom are one of those cases and even though our name, Glossom, is a registered name we can’t use the Glossom account inTwitter. We wrote about this issue to Twitter but we ddn’t get any answer so far.