A Simple Solution for Faked Tweets
Recently, a somewhat large selection of my timeline was shocked by the discovery that it's simple to make a fake-looking tweet on the web. Some feared it would be only a matter of time before some news organization is suckered by a fake tweet that seems to come from a real source.
Luckily, the solution already exists, and it's something you already use constantly: GNU PrivacyGuard signatures Here is an approach for verifying a tweet is authentic and hasn't been tampered with that is so simple even @KimKardashian could figure it out. To get started, we just need to do a little setup first:
- Of course, you have already installed GnuPG for your own use, generated a keypair and uploaded it to a keyserver so that other people can look it up. Its email address must be publicly listed in your twitter profile.
- Then, you must collect the public keys of the people you fo