Earlier tonight, a Twitter account named @Fauci sent out a tweet impersonating Dr. Anthony Fauci and was quickly suspended. We did some research on it before the ban, and decided to present our findings as a tutorial of sorts on detecting impostor accounts.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
First off, the (subsequently suspended) @Fauci account sent what it claimed was its first tweet in December 2020, despite being created in 2009. It's also potentially odd that Fauci would retweet the Biden transition team while still working for the Trump administration.
Secondly, we looked at old tweets tagging @Fauci, and most of them don't appear to have much to do with virology or any other medical topic. Some are in Indonesian, which as far as we have been able to discern, the real Dr. Fauci does not speak.
Finally, @Fauci's first followers are mostly fashion-themed, including an account named @FauciVintage. We suspect that the @Fauci account was originally focused on fashion, but was repurposed to impersonate Dr. Fauci, either by the original owner or by someone who took it over.
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