Celebrities seek protection for their Twitter accounts amid hackings

Celebrities in the Kingdom including actors and media personalities have sought immediate measures to protect their accounts on social media networks like Twitter following a spate of cyber attacks in the past few days.
Lamenting the lack of competent authority to coordinate with social media networks around the world to help them in situations where their accounts are hacked and stolen, they said there was resentment among many after Twitter turned into a platform for expressing independent views and opinion.
Twitter accounts of a number of media personalities have been hacked, with some of them completely lost. These personalities, among others, include Ghanim Al-Qahtani, who could not retrieve his account, Lama Saud, Faheed Al-Yami, Prince Saud bin Faisal, Khadeeja Al-Waal, Faisal Al-Rashid, Yasir Al-Shamrani, Nasir Al-Saleh, Marwah Mohammad.
Yasir Al-Shamrani said he uses his account, which was hacked last weekend, for personal and practical purposes. The hacker didn’t stop at that; he moved on to hack other accounts through his port.
Al-Shamrani called on the relevant authorities to launch an initiative to protect social media accounts. He wondered why he can’t communicate with the Twitter administration when faced with a problem like some of his colleagues could when they faced similar hassles.
Nawwaf Al-Humaidan, Middle East Coordinator for documenting Twitter accounts, said that piracy was a result of links that were sent through private e-mails to the accounts of Saudi celebrities.
Al-Humaidan said he received several calls from many Saudi media personalities who were trying to retrieve their accounts. “Ghanim Al-Qahtani said he received an e-mail from a friend containing a vague link. After he clicked the link, he was connected to a suspicious registration page. It was then that he lost control over his account and all data in it,” he said.
Lama Saud, anchor in Panorama FM, said the same thing happened to her. She received a message from journalist Faheed Al-Yami, another victim of hacking, containing important news and a short link.