Palace warns vs fake govt Twitter account

Malacañang on Sunday warned netizens against a new Twitter account claiming to be that of the Official Gazette, saying it is fake. Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said the Official Gazette has only one Twitter account, @gov.ph. "Please RT (retweet): @govphOfficial is a fake account. The Official Gazette only has 1 account, and it's @govph," she said on her Twitter account. The @gov.phOfficial Twitter account has yet to post a message as of 1 p.m. Sunday. However, it already had some 90 followers, including what appeared to be the account of the Mandaue (Cebu) public information office.

In late July, the Official Gazette exposed a fake government Twitter account, which claimed to be the account of the Commission on Higher Education. The fake CHED account had created confusion among college students who at the time were at a loss on whether classes would be suspended due to Tropical Storm Juaning (Nock-Ten). In the CHED's case, the fake Twitter account bore what appeared to be the seal of the CHED and described itself as the "Official twitter account of the Commission on Higher Education." The Twitter account of the Official Gazette later claimed CHED had no Twitter account, and thus the Twitter accounts posing as CHED are not official. The account had already been deleted. "We have verified with CHED, the commission has no Twitter account. The accounts posing as CHED are not official," the Official Gazette tweeted. The Twitter account claiming to be that of CHED had already been deleted. - KBK, GMA News