Charter Spectrum is a major US internet service provider, and the conduit between many Americans and their sweet, sweet internet. As such, one would think the company would have a basic grasp of how Wi-Fi security works — specifically, that it would know better than to tell its roughly 31,700 Twitter followers to change their Wi-Fi passwords in support of their favourite sports teams.
Image: Techcrunch
Unfortunately, it did just that on Monday afternoon while attempting to celebrate the teams headed to the Super Bowl. The tweet was first noticed by TechCrunch and has since been deleted, presumably because it’s absolutely garbage security advice: If you want an easy way to hack into someone’s Wi-Fi, just ask them which sportsball team they like!
It also came just one day after a flurry of football related tweets from Charter’s @GetSpectrum account. The earlier tweets are only notable because they involved followers voting for who they thought would win on Sunday afternoon. (They got it totally wrong.)
Are you ready for some #Football? The #AFC Championship starts now! Who will win? @steelers @Patriots #HereWeGo #PatriotsNation
— Spectrum (@GetSpectrum) January 22, 2017
The NFC all comes down to this! Will the @packers or @AtlantaFalcons take home the title? #GBvsATL #GoPackGo #RiseUp #NFL
— Spectrum (@GetSpectrum) January 22, 2017
It’s possible that Charter Spectrum isn’t full of Steelers fans trying to weed out the idiot Patriots fans, but instead just got the network name and Wi-Fi password confused. That’s a totally understandable thing to confuse! My mum does it all the time! However, my mum is also not the social media manager for a major internet service provider that should know better.