CHICAGO — McDonald’s said its main Twitter account was hacked Thursday morning, resulting in an insulting tweet directed at President Trump.
A tweet posted after 8 a.m. Central Time on McDonald’s main account, @McDonaldsCorp, called out the president, calling him a “disgusting excuse of a President” along with a judgment of his hand size.
The tweet, which has since been removed, was online for about 20 minutes. It was pinned to the top of McDonald’s Twitter feed for a period of time.
About an hour later, McDonald’s said in a tweet that Twitter had informed the fast-food giant that its account had been compromised.
“We deleted the tweet, secured our account and are now investigating this,” the tweet said.
A spokesman for Twitter said the social media site doesn’t comment on individual accounts.
Other Twitter users responded to the original McDonald’s tweet, with some joking that they would visit McDonald’s more as a result.
Kellan Terry, a senior data analyst for BrandWatch, a company that provides social media insights, said the tweet caused McDonald’s Twitter mentions to spike more than 150 percent.
About two-thirds of the mentions showing emotion were positive.
“Big Macs are starting to trend within the McDonald’s conversation as people are either saying they are buying a Big Mac today to mark the occasion, or they wonder if Trump supporters will now ‘cut Big Macs from their diet,'” Terry said.
Terry doesn’t believe the tweet will have an impact on McDonald’s beyond the next few days. But security experts say it should be a lesson to corporations to better secure their increasingly important social media presence.
“There are just so many ways, if you’re not careful, for an adversary to have access to your social media accounts,” said Michael Bailey, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Corporations are ripe targets because they have such a large presence on social media.”
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