Beyonce's Twitter Among Celebrity Accounts Accessed By Employees & Contractors

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Contractors and employees for Twitter access many celebrity accounts, including Beyonce's.

Twitter's security features have constantly been under criticism with many believing that users' privacy aren't being held at a high standard. That even goes to some of the biggest celebrities on the planet including Beyoncé. According to a new report from Bloomberg, contractors, and employees for the company breached user privacy by accessing their accounts, years before the major Bitcoin hack that compromised major verified accounts on Twitter.

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Employees and contractors for Twitter had access to tools that would allow them to have certain powers such as resetting accounts or issuing responses to violations on the platform. But beyond that, they were given access to track major accounts, like Beyonce's, to find out things like their locations.

"The controls were so porous that at one point in 2017 and 2018 some contractors made a kind of game out of creating bogus help-desk inquiries that allowed them to peek into celebrity accounts, including Beyonce’s, to track the stars’ personal data including their approximate locations gleaned from their devices’ IP addresses," it reads in the Bloomberg report.

Professional service vendor Cognizant had employees that were part of this breach, though Twitter said “we have no indication that the partners we work with on customer service and account management played a part."

The concerns over Twitter access were serious between 2015 to 2019 with Twitter reportedly having trouble keeping up with these sort of hacks. 


About The Author
Aron A. is a features editor for HotNewHipHop. Beginning his tenure at HotNewHipHop in July 2017, he has comprehensively documented the biggest stories in the culture over the past few years. Throughout his time, Aron’s helped introduce a number of buzzing up-and-coming artists to our audience, identifying regional trends and highlighting hip-hop from across the globe. As a Canadian-based music journalist, he has also made a concerted effort to put spotlights on artists hailing from North of the border as part of Rise & Grind, the weekly interview series that he created and launched in 2021. Aron also broke a number of stories through his extensive interviews with beloved figures in the culture. These include industry vets (Quality Control co-founder Kevin "Coach K" Lee, Wayno Clark), definitive producers (DJ Paul, Hit-Boy, Zaytoven), cultural disruptors (Soulja Boy), lyrical heavyweights (Pusha T, Styles P, Danny Brown), cultural pioneers (Dapper Dan, Big Daddy Kane), and the next generation of stars (Lil Durk, Latto, Fivio Foreign, Denzel Curry). Aron also penned cover stories with the likes of Rick Ross, Central Cee, Moneybagg Yo, Vince Staples, and Bobby Shmurda.
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