Parag Agrawal refutes whistleblower's claims about Twitter hiding negligent cybersecurity practises, failure to estimate bots

Amid the Twitter vs Elon Musk face-off, a former Twitter executive has accused the microblogging platform of underestimating spam and fake accounts on the platform.

Peter ‘Mudge’ Zatko has accused Twitter of having hidden negligent security practices, misleading federal regulators about its safety, and failing to properly estimate the number of bots on its platform. 

Zatko stopped serving Twitter after he was fired in January this year for “poor performance and ineffective” leadership, as per the company.

Parag Agrawal and Elon Musk react to claims 

However, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal came out and refuted these allegations in an internal email. “There are news reports outlining claims about Twitter’s privacy, security, and data protection practices that were made by Mudge Zatko, a former Twitter executive who was terminated in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance. We are reviewing the redacted claims that have been published, but what we’ve seen so far is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context,” the email read. 

In the email, Agrawal further said that Zatko himself was responsible for many claims being made, during his time at Twitter. “I know this is frustrating and confusing to read, given Mudge was accountable for many aspects of this work he is now inaccurately portraying more than six months after his termination. But none of this takes away from the important work you have done and continue to do to safeguard the privacy and security of our customers and their data,” he said. 

“Given the spotlight on Twitter at the moment, we can assume that we will continue to see more headlines in the coming days – this will only make our work harder. I know that all of you take a lot of pride in the work we do together and in the values that guide us. We will pursue all paths to defend our integrity as a company and set the record straight,” added Agrawal. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is currently engaged in a legal battle with Twitter for walking away from a 44-dollar billion deal for buying the platform, also reacted to the claims made by the former platform’s employee in a cryptic way. 

pic.twitter.com/KsWiazActx

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2022

It should be noted that earlier this year, Twitter admitted to overestimating its user base by 1.9 million users for almost three years. The micro-blogging site blamed technical errors for this. 

Indian government placed its own agents inside the company alleges Zatko 

Zatko has also made some shocking claims and said that the Indian government has placed its own agents inside Twitter. 

According to a Reuters report, Zatko has said that the Indian government had access to sensitive user data through their agents at Twitter due to the platform's weak security infrastructure. 

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