Ebola has been big news lately with the
outbreak in Africa, two quarantined care givers being flown to the
United States and one case reported tn the Mideast. So, it was no
surprise that when an errant tweet, from the official account of
Yahoo News, mentioned a outbreak, in Georgia, affecting 135 was
re-tweeted by over 100 followers. Yahoo News quickly came out with a
tweet letting their followers know that reports of any outbreak were
false and unauthorized.
Earlier,
an unauthorized tweet with misinformation on Ebola was sent from this
account; please disregard that tweet.
Quite a few media sites reported that the erroneous tweet was made by
hackers. There were no follow ups or malicious links that would
normally associate with a hacking attack. No groups of individuals
have taken credit for breaking into Yahoo's account. Yahoo has not
acknowledged any detection of a hack. Yahoo has said that they are
working with tweet to investigate any possible security leaks.
It would appear from the way Yahoo worded their correction that it
was a case of someone with in the company not going through channels.
If this is the case it would seem that policies inside Yahoo News
need to be looked at so there are not any more erroneous tweets.
The two American missionaries that have been flown back to the United
States are under strict quarantine at Emory University Hospital.
Authorities down there have assured the public that they are taking
every precaution that the virus is well confined.
"We
will continue to cooperate and collaborate with [public health
officials] and adhere strictly to their guidelines in the return of
our missionaries to the United States," SIM USA president Bruce
Johnson said.
Ebola has no know cure and has been linked to almost 700 hundred
deaths on the African continent. Making it understandable why there
was such a big panic when the erroneous tweet appeared on Sunday.
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