Twitter Legal Battles Revisited

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Irwin Lazar, Vice President & Service Director, Nemertes Research

June 8, 2009

1 Min Read

Back in January I posted about the potential for legal battles over Twitter account names as squatters began to move in, or in some cases even fraudulently impersonate other individuals or organizations. The concern I had at the time was how the potential legal battles could impact Twitter as a company, and whether or not they could handle the deluge of filings. Today, Twitter's official blog notes that in response to fraudulent account usage they are testing a verified account capability.   

Again, this sort of effort could require a great deal of resources (and indeed Twitter's posting notes that this service will be limited specifically due to resource constraints). I have to wonder if there's an easier way - perhaps a partnership with Verisign or some other way to rely on SSL certificates to enable a trust relationship? Or even a key based on a token on a corporate web site that's linked to a twitter account? I expect you'll see a great deal of input by identity management experts into ways to mitigate this challenge.

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About the Author(s)

Irwin Lazar

Vice President & Service Director, Nemertes Research

Irwin Lazar is the Vice President and Service Director at Nemertes Research, where he manages research operations, develops and manages research projects, conducts and analyzes primary research, and advises numerous enterprise and vendor clients. Irwin is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in areas including VOIP, UC, video conferencing, social computing, collaboration, contact center and customer engagement.

A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and sought-after speaker and author, Irwin is a blogger for No Jitter and frequent author for SearchUnifiedCommunications.com. He is a frequent resource for the business and trade press and is regular speaker at events such as Enterprise Connect and Interop. Irwin's earlier background was in IP network architecture, design and engineering.

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