Fake Pope on Twitter dupes thousands of followers, says he’s loved more than Santa Claus

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was only named as the new Pope in Rome’s St Peter’s Square a few hours ago, and already he’s making an impact on social media.

Hundreds of thousands of Twitter users, for instance, have started to follow @JMBergoglio, which purports to be the Twitter account of the Argentinian cardinal who has just landed the top job in the Roman Catholic church.

Indeed, every time I refresh my browser I see hundreds more people are choosing to follow the account…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.