The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) came under fire recently after old tweets from its official Twitter account @SKMM_MCMC surfaced on Tuesday (12 January).
This happened just a few hours after the country’s internet regulator warned users to not publish offensive posts after Malaysia declared a state of Emergency.
This is amusing as hell. Malaysian Internet regulator's Twitter account is a rebranding of a personal account @Nazrulllhakim (probably bought for the followers? How? Why? Where's the money?) But more than that, they didn't even bother scrubbing the old account's previous tweets. https://t.co/trgC16qqVZ
— Zurairi A.R. (@zurairi) January 12, 2021
Looking at the old tweets, it appears that they were posted by an individual and had no connection with telecommunications, postal and multimedia matters.
In fact, some of the tweets were rants loaded with profanity.
Nazrul Hakim, a 22-year-old man from Pahang, told the Malay Mail that he was the original owner of the account @Nazrulllhakim, which he had sold to another person. This person was believed to have then sold the account to the administrator of the MCMC account.
“The account had around 50,000 followers at that time. So somebody offered to buy that account from me. I was then just 15 or 16 years old. As a school kid, of course, I wanted to feel what it’s like to have money,” he told to Malay Mail.
Nazrul also said that he did not remove his old tweets as it never crossed his mind.
He said that he had never thought that the account would be used by a government body, especially when he did not even clear his old tweets from the account.
After the old tweets went viral, the MCMC immediately set its account to private to shield itself from further exposure and criticism.
The MCMC later released a statement saying that its account was hacked by irresponsible parties and that it will be temporarily suspending its account.
The regulatory body’s Communications and Corporate Department revealed that numerous suspicious messages sent through the account were not issued by MCMC.
“People are advised not to be influenced with suspicious, vile and defamatory messages that have been uploaded through the account,” it said in the statement.
