Oops! Secret Service Tweets Anti-Fox News Message

Let's preface this by saying this is an easy mistake that's happening more and more as social media becomes a prominent marketing tool. But considering this happened at the Secret Service, where "secret" is in the title and privacy is so important, it adds a level of "uh oh."

A person who works for the Secret Service* and who is in charge of the organization's tweets also has a personal Twitter account. And when that person went to send a message from his personal account, he actually sent it from the Secret Service's site. Oops.

That mix-up produced this message about Fox News:

According to readers on the site ShortFromBlog, the tweet was removed minutes later.

It's unclear if the person responsible was removed just as quickly. However, in a statement to the Washington Post, the Secret Service admitted the mistake and said the person no longer has access to the account:

“An employee with access to the Secret Service's Twitter account, who mistakenly believed they were on their personal account, posted an unapproved and inappropriate tweet. The tweet contained no vulgarity, security or pertinent agency information. The tweet did not reflect the views of the U.S. Secret Service and it was immediately removed.

“We apologize for this mistake, and the user no longer has access to our official account.  Policies and practices which would have prevented this were not followed and will be reinforced for all account users. We will ensure existing policies are strictly adhered to in order to prevent this mistake from being repeated, and we are conducting appropriate internal follow-up.”

(H/T: Mediaite and Paul)