Murdoch's wife hit by spoof Twitter profile A spoof Twitter account impersonating Wendi Deng Murdoch, wife of media mogul Rupert, successfully confused both his News Corp communications team and the messaging site's own staff, highlighting the ease with which identities can be misappropriated online. Mr Murdoch, News Corp's 80-year-old chairman, caused a stir over the New Year holiday when he joined Twitter, the social messaging service, after meeting its co-founder, Jack Dorsey. News outlets around the world leapt on both his own messages and those appearing to come from his wife's companion account, @wendi_deng, which claimed to be "joining my husband @rupertmurdoch in our new digital adventure on Twitter." For a period, both Murdoch accounts were "verified" with a "tick" logo that Twitter says it grants after making independent checks to "establish authenticity of well known accounts so users can trust that a legitimate source is authoring their Tweets." Several news outlets also cited News International spokespeople confirming the Twitter identities of Mr Murdoch and his wife. But after more than two days and several dozen tweets, most of them directed at Mr Murdoch, the person controlling the @wendi_deng account admitted that it was a hoax. "You have to wonder even more why Twitter verified this account for a full day," the user wrote. It might be only a small matter, but you have to worry about the management of News International and Twitter if . . . they can both readily confirm, for a while at least, that this was the account of a very noted personality. Rival social networks Facebook and Google+, as well as Chinese micro-blogging sites, require their members to use real names, but Twitter allows pseudonyms and even spoof accounts, when clearly flagged as such. That difference in policy has prompted a debate about online authenticity, trustworthiness and freedom of speech. A Twitter spokesperson said: "We don't comment on our verification process but can confirm that the @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time. We apologise for the confusion this caused. Twitter's help page says that it is "still verifying some trusted sources, such as our advertisers and partners," to establish authenticity for high-profile accounts which regularly suffer from identity confusion. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, a tech security firm, said the slip-up raises awkward questions for Twitter and News Corp. "Clearly someone has been sloppy," he said. And although no harm was done on this occasion, it's possible to imagine how someone with more malicious intentions could have taken advantage of the situation. Simon Baggs, a partner at Wiggin, a media law firm, said that such unlicensed impersonation could technically fall foul of UK libel or copyright legislation, although it was unlikely to break US law. "A cause of action for libel seems very unlikely," he said. If Wendi wanted to pursue (which also seems very unlikely), false attribution of authorship would likely be her best case. News International said that its previous confirmation of the @wendi_deng account's authenticity was "unintentional and mistaken," but said that Mr Murdoch's account was genuine. Additional reporting by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York