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Vine appears to have verified a fake Beyoncé account

Vine appears to have verified a fake Beyoncé account

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And we think we know why

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A verified Beyoncé account created on Vine four days ago appears to be fake. The account, which had racked up only around 40,000 views of the single video posted to it — the same one she posted on her Instagram account — was suspended early Sunday afternoon. But that was only after employees of Twitter and Vine, including Vine's head of product, tweeted links welcoming Beyonce to the video-sharing network. They later deleted their tweets.

jason toff bey long

So why did Vine verify a fake account? The company did not respond to a request for comment, but there's a loophole in Vine's verification process that may have made it easy for a fake Bey to get her green badge. Vine verifies users two ways: manually, and by authenticating with verified Twitter accounts. (Twitter owns Vine.) If you register a new Vine account using a verified Twitter account, the Vine account is automatically verified. From there, you can change your Vine account to whatever you want.

Using this method, our own Ross Miller managed to create a verified Vine account for Twitter super-friend Taye Diggs. We borrowed the username Diggs uses for his Instagram account, changed the profile photo on Vine, and boom: Verified Vine account for Taye, at least until it gets suspended.

This is a loophole that needs to get fixed, and soon: Twitter has verified more than 100,000 people, and Vine's verification bug is ripe for mischief.