Fake Wendi Deng and Murdoch gaffes embarrass Twitter

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Twitter has apologised after a fake verified account of Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng appeared on the micro-blogging site.

The account was created just after the official Rupert Murdoch profile appeared online and erroneously gained the blue tick to confirm it was Wendi Deng.

Yet it emerged shortly after that it was not the real Deng and the profile owner subsequently admitted it was fake.

You have to wonder even more why Twitter verified this account for a full day. I never received any communication from them about this.

"Hello Twitter. As News International has finally come to their senses, it's time to confirm that yes, this is a fake account. I'm not Wendi," the anonymous Deng poser said on the social networking site.

"And you have to wonder even more why Twitter verified this account for a full day. I never received any communication from them about this."

Twitter apologised for the mistake after the gaffe became public knowledge.

"We don't comment on our verification process but can confirm that the @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time. We apologise for the confusion this caused," a spokesperson said.

Commentators have continued to cast aspersions on the Twitter processes surrounding verification of accounts, however.

It appears another error has emerged from the saga too. When Rupert Murdoch signed up to the service this week, he deleted one of his tweets, which read: "Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country."

Even though Murdoch removed the comment from his Twitter profile, the message could still be read via its permalink, according to AllTwitter.

Official policy is to delete tweets completely from the web so they can't be viewed by the public.

Twitter had not responded to a request for comment on the latter point at the time of publication.

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