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Twitter has made three major changes to its site rules in an attempt to prevent foreign actors from using its platform to meddle in the upcoming US midterm elections, but also to cut down on the amount of spam and abuse going on on the platform.
The first of these three changes concerns the dissemination of hacked materials on the platform.
Twitter already had rules in place that prohibited the distribution of hacked materials that contain private information or trade secrets, but after Monday’s update, the platform’s review teams will also ban accounts that claim responsibility for a hack, make hacking threats, or issue incentives to hack specific people and accounts.
Shut Facebook and Twitter down for 6 weeks before elections
Until now, the platform has –for unknown reasons– left hackers’ accounts alone, rarely intervening to take one down, and usually only after requests from law enforcement officials.
For example, the account of a notorious hacker group known as The Dark Overlord is still active even today, after the hackers used it for years to dump hacked data online, make threats, or attempt to extort hacked companies.
In the future, accounts like these and others will be removed more quickly, or so Twitter claims.
TechRepublic: What to expect from cyber-attacks during an election year
But this new rule wasn’t added just for dealing with petty cyber-criminals or script kiddies, but more likely to deal political influence campaigns.
More accurately, for accounts such as the ones of DCLeaks, a website that was established in June 2016 and which was responsible for publishing email leaks from multiple prominent figures in the US government and military ahead of the 2016 US presidential election. It is unclear what amount of those leaks were legitimate, but Twitter plans to use the new rules to prevent such type of data from making the rounds on its platform and possibly influencing election outcomes.
Twitter also cracks down on fake accounts and bot networks
But besides cracking down on hacked accounts, Twitter’s new rule updates are also harder on fake accounts.