Carjacked: Jeep’s Twitter account falls into hacker’s hands

By Davis Adams February 20, 2013

Social media may get our geeky hearts fluttering, but what do you do when your account gets hacked? On a good day, it might just mean that your friends receive a few spammy messages. But yesterday, Jeep wasn’t so lucky.

It took about an hour for Jeep to regain control of its Twitter handle, @Jeep, but that wasn’t quick enough to stop the hackers from playing havoc with the account. Jeep’s profile image was swapped for a Cadillac logo, and several tweets were published. Some said that the brand was sold to Cadillac, others made references to employees partaking in illegal drug use in the bathroom, and even others gave direct shoutouts to hacker groups LulzSec and Anonymous. The photo above shows Jeep’s hacked bio, which was changed to, “The official Twitter handle for the Jeep — Just Empty Every Pocket, sold to Cadillac…In a hood near you!”

This new internet attack follows just one day after the keys to Burger King’s Twitter account were stolen, too.

Jeep has since regained control of its account and let the world know that the brand wasn’t responsible for the unexpected Tweets. Luckily, damage appears minimal since the tweets were relatively unoffensive. And on the bright side, the brand gained several new followers in the process. There’s speculation on who may have broken into the account, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

That said, we want to know what you think. How closely do you follow brands on the internet, and how seriously would you take a hacked social account? Does this change your opinion of America’s most rugged automaker? Let us know in the comments below.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

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