Vodafone Suspends Employee Following Homophobic Remarks

A homophobic comment was posted on Vodafone UK's official Twitter feed last Friday, leading to a bout of humorous speculation that Vodafone's account had been hacked.

However, it swiftly emerged that the message had been posted by a Vodafone employee who had official access to the Twitter service as part of their customer care role.

Vodafone UK has managed an official Twitter account since last February, which manages customer care issues raised on the micro-messaging service.

On Friday afternoon, a message was posted to the Twitter account which read "VodafoneUK is fed up of dealing with dirty homo's and is going after beaver".

The message was swiftly deleted and the team managing the account spent the rest of the afternoon posting "We weren't hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We're very sorry" to people who complained about the message.

On the upside, the publicity gained the Twitter account a further four hundred followers in a single day as Vodafone customers became aware of a Twitter presence for the company.