A fake pro-Putin account on X (formerly Twitter) stole the identity of the heroic Leicester Square security guard Abdullah, raising more concerns about misinformation and disinformation on the social media platform.
The misinformation began after Abdullah gave interviews to the media, with a foreign account re-branding itself as @AbdullahfromUK, which was just hours earlier, posting under @Fanof_Putin.
Tell MAMA published a thread on Twitter/X regarding the duplicity yesterday. See https://x.com/TellMamaUK/status/1823027489922224250
The BBC article (which included an image of Abdullah) went online at around 1 pm, with the first tweet from the fake Abdullah account appearing on the platform with the stolen photo at 3:01 pm, with light photo edits in hopes of adding to the deception.
Google results confirmed that the Fanof_Putin account had re-branded to steal the identity of Abdullah.
The pro-Putin, pro-Hamas materials appeared around May 2024 after a two-year gap in media posts. The account holder mass deleted old posts to appear more authentic, appearing under the name @Fanof_Putin until the early afternoon of 12 August, with its origins beforehand appearing under the username @ZartashaPti years prior.
Archival captures confirmed the redirections from the previous account names. In further research into their Twitter usage, the individual behind this account shared pro-Putin materials verbatim lifted months later.
Tell MAMA researchers identified anti-Muslim remarks directed towards the fake account, with some accusing them of being “terrorist scum” before news of the falsehood grew.
The far-right agitator Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) also deleted his post after falsely accusing the security guard of supporting Hamas, The National reported.
Despite X adding a community note informing readers that the account is fake, it remained on the platform until today, having again changed its username from @AbdullahfromUK to @AbdullahU_k. The platform did not remove the account. The individual responsible, however, did delete the account before randomly returning again.
More broadly, criminalising anti-Muslim and Islamophobic memes circulating on the platform after news of the horrific stabbings in Leicester Square broke had linked Muslims to violence in London, with one such example gaining over one million impressions alone.
The real account belonging to Abdullah is here
“I would like to inform you that there are many fake accounts circulating on social media under my name,” he made clear, before holding a piece of paper listing his various, real social media pages to the camera.
So what are some tips for identifying false information from Twitter accounts?
We advise communities to check when the account first appeared on the platform via its bio and check replies by searching to:username (no spaces). Consider: Have people interacted with it as of late or at all? Or did people interact with the account under a previous name? Is their profile photo of a person? Google Images to TinEye and Yandex, are multiple reverse image search engines. There is guidance to help identify AI-generated faces.
Some accounts might also appear on archived platforms like the web archive machine by searching the full URL – this will be the Twitter dot com URL (not the X dot com version most often). You can also search the account profile link via good within quotation marks to see if the search engine indexed the profile or previous tweets. Taking screenshots is also a great way to preserve evidence and we encourage the public to report such accounts to ourselves and the platforms when they come across them.
Tell MAMA has previously provided advice and tips to improve social media literacy.
Members of the public also flagged concerns about some MailOnline coverage, where an image-based headline that read “’knifeman’ snared” made no distinction between the heroic security guard and the arrested suspect.
Members of the public contacted Tell MAMA to raise their concerns about how the original MailOnline image and headline made no distinction between Abdullah’s heroism and the arrest of the suspect.
A later version added the caption “hero security guard” above Abdullah’s head to make the distinction. Reverse image search engine TinEye captured the original version.
Credit: TinEye.
The suspect, 32-year-old Ioan Pintaru, who was charged with attempted murder and possession of a bladed article, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday morning.