Bob Mackin
B.C. government Facebook, March 27
Did a real jihadist hijack the British Columbia government’s Facebook page on March 27 or was it the work of a premature April Fool’s Day prankster?
The site briefly featured images of fire, a person wearing military fatigues, and Arabic script meaning “we are the government.”
Awkward Tweets after account hacked
First, the B.C. government Tweeted that it was “vandalized” and later that it was “compromised.” On Tuesday, it used the latter word again.
“The B.C. government’s Facebook page was compromised but the issue has now been resolved,” said a prepared statement sent by Rodney Porter. “The province is in contact with Facebook to determine how best to mitigate or prevent incidents like this from occurring in the future. This was a matter related solely to Facebook. We worked with Facebook to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.”
Porter did not answer whether the government is investigating the incident internally or whether police had been contacted.
A representative of Facebook, who refused publication of their name, told theBreaker “their page got hacked, we were able to restore access after they filed a complaint.”
The Facebook representative recommended users pick a strong password, not share it with anyone, and read Facebook’s security features and security tips pages.
The B.C. election is May 9 and, like the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Facebook will be a battleground. The Liberals have produced Facebook video profiles of their candidates. NDP has two attack ads so far, the latest using the image of rotting strawberries as a metaphor for Liberal government corruption.
