Are you the Real Deal? Twitter and Identity

This afternoon, something curious occurred on a Twitter account ascribed to the nation's biggest chain of pharmacies. It started me thinking about how we know who we are talking to and listening to in an age of rapid electronic communication.

The events and it's potential impact to Boots the Chemist's PR are covered very well by Louise Kidney elsewhere. Very briefly, protestors on Oxford street were sprayed with CS gas by a policeman, and staff at Boots aided the injured whilst waiting for an ambulance. What could have been a fairly nice "Boots employees are professionals who help out injured people" story took a twist when the Twitter account "@bootsmealdeal" posted the message "We at Boots are disgusted by police behaviour today."

So how do I know that this account represents the views of Boots the Chemists? The first thing that I and at least 3 others did was to examine the history of this account. All the tweets sounded reasonable and were internally consistent. It had the Boots homepage as the external URL for the account - it all seemed quite legitimate.

Then I followed this by searching the Boots website for any mention of twitter accounts: nothing. This made me suspicious.

So it would appear that my and a few others instinctive method for validating a messenger is to search for consistency -both internal consistency and consistency with other sources. Did others do the same or anything differently to determine whether to believe what the account what?

As it happens, shortly after that, the Twitter account in question mysteriously disappeared from the site. Anyone would think Boots' legal department had had a word with Twitter..