Burger King's Twitter account was hacked and made to look like McDonald's.
The fast food restaurant's Twitter account was taken over by an unidentified prankster and made to reflect a fake ownership change.
"We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a 'hood near you," BurgerKing tweeted at noon on Monday, Feb. 18. The account's profile picture was also changed to a McDonald's logo and its profile information replaced with "Just got sold to McDonalds because the whopper flopped" and "FREDOM (sic) IS FAILURE" and a dead link to a press release.
Whoever gained control of the Twitter account proceeded to tweet obscene messages, including many claiming drug use among Burger King employees. Burger King suspended the account at 1:00 PM.
"The Twitter account of the Burger King brand has been hacked," Bryson Thornton, spokesman for Burger King, told CNN Money. "We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to reestablish our legitimate site and authentic postings."
Twitter has a policy against commenting on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons, but a spokesman "urged users to use good password hygiene on Twitter."
Burger King released a statement to Mashable discussing the incident.
"It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING® brand has been hacked. We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings. We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics."
McDonald's tweeted "We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking."
This came at a bad time for the Burger King brand, which already suffered a blow when trace levels of horse DNA were found in hamburger meat meant for restaurants in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark in late January.
