When’s the last time you changed your password and updated your communications crisis plan?
This was the official Burger King Twitter account at about 11:30am ET on February 18. The hackers changed the name of the account to McDonalds, and replaced the Burger King logo with a McDonalds logo. The first tweet sent by the hackers reads “We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in hood near you.”
Since then, the account sent a steady stream of highly embarrassing tweets, many referencing drug use, links to music videos, and shout-outs to other Twitter accounts. Here’s an example:
and this one:
The account’s Twitter bio was also changed – the link did not lead to a working page.
The Burger King social media team is clearly having a bad day. We’ll update the story as it develops.
UPDATE 1:20 pm: The @BurgerKing account has been suspended.
UPDATE 1:56 pm: The @McDonalds account team has weighed in with this Tweet:
We empathize with our @burgerking counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.
— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) February 18, 2013
UPDATE 2:45 pm: The Associated Press reports that Burger King plans to “post a statement on Facebook later today to apologize, especially for the offensive posts. It hopes to have the account back up soon.” The company says it reached out to Twitter to ask them to suspend the account.
UPDATE Feb. 19, 9:20 am: At of around midnight Eastern time, the Burger King account came back online with the following tweet:
Interesting day here at BURGER KING®, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!
— BurgerKing (@BurgerKing) February 19, 2013
