'Where are you, Charlie?!'

Being hacked on X and my enforced hiatus from politics

Long time no see, right? I seemed to have gone missing off the face of the earth? You would think that this is what had happened, and, indeed this is what has felt like to be hacked on Twitter, and “Unpersoned” in the internet space.

Overnight, my audience of 68,000 people was reduced to one, and a world of discourse to reduced to none. And, boy, have I got a screwed-up drama to tell you.

Put the kettle on folks, you’re in for ride.

Hacked on X

As most of you will know, I covered the sentencing of the Southport Killer live on Twitter/X as event unfolded in the courtroom on 23 January 2025.

During the hearing, I created a timeline recounting what happened on the day of the attack, minute-by-minute, so that the public could see the full horror of this attack, and what had been kept out of the media.

This was followed by indirect criticism from Merseyside Police who claimed the families had asked for the details of the case not to be published.

This had been a lie, told for the convenience of the Police who did not want a riot to breakout as a result of their lies and inaction.

Anything said before a public gallery in a courtroom is considered to be ‘in the public domain’ unless the judge places specific reporting restrictions upon evidence, such as an embargo upon publishing the identities of children. No such request had been made before the hearing beyond maintaining anonymity for the children, nor had a request been delivered during the court proceedings.

Furthermore, families in the courtroom would have been unaware of what was being published in the press and mentioned in online discourse, as phones are not allowed in the courtroom except where selected journalists have submitted a written application.

This statement by Merseyside Police also contradicts the numerous discussions I had with families who had been affected by the attack. Whilst one family cannot speak for another, all the affect families to which I had spoken had, contrary to the Police memo, expressed a desire for every detail about the attack to be in the public domain. They want the nation to known what their children had to ensure at the hands of Axel Rudakubana, and government incompetence that had facilitated the attack.

This timeline had 27 million views on the day and 50 million across the week. But on Monday 27th January — 3 days after the sentencing, and the same day I had finished filming an interview on the Southport cover-up with

Connor Tomlinson

and

Harrison Pitt

for

New Culture Forum

— my X account was hacked.

The only thing to be deleted from my account is this Southport timeline.

Yes, really.

Perhaps, what is more peculiar, it was not the whole timeline that was deleted. The pinned post which explains the thread beneath remains available. It is when you open the thread that you see every post beneath has been made ‘unavailable.’

It is almost as if the hacker wanted to make sure I knew what had been done, or to give my audience the impression that I myself had chosen to delete the timeline and the evidence pertaining to the Southport massacre.

The account is still live, and the only other thing to have occurred since the hacker took control is unfollowing my colleagues and supporters. I contacted X Support for help, dozens of times over the past eight weeks, but they refused to restore the account to me, claiming again and again that they could not prove who I am.

This is in spite of me sending them:

• Photo ID
• Photo of me with that ID
• Bank card details used for X Premium
• Original registration email
• Original verification email when phone number was added
• Date I added 2FA
• Dates of archive downloads
• Past IP addresses

They have had everything but a DNA sample! Taken all-in-all, the situation is certainly…odd.

Return to public life

In a surprising turn of events, after weeks of petition X Support, X engineers, leveraging my network and public platform, and capturing the attention of the Big E(lon)-man himself, I had been met with an impenetrable wall of silence.

On trying to create a new X account, as the X Support team had told me to do, that account was suspended within 48 hrs and my IP address barred from creating any X account in future, again without explanation.

That evening, I though I may well truly be looking at the end of my journalistic career (at least for the foreseeable future.)

With no way to communicate to my audience on mass, attract work, and no method of keeping up with the news cycle and the work of my colleagues, writing (as a full-time career) seemed, once again, out of reach.

And yet, that night, after months of being told, ‘No’ with no method of appeal, I receive an email from X in the early hours of the morning, apologising for the trouble, and handing me back access to my account, no questions asked.

I could hardly believe it. No explanation was offered as to why my identity — so ambiguous and sinister a person I had been to them to date — could now be verified. And, more to the point, why the breaks had finally been released from my account.

Within minutes I could post, and within minutes, the responses — the likes, comments and retweets — flooded in as they had done before. As if nothing had happened.

A few hours after that, the deleted Southport timeline re-appeared, intact, able to be viewed by all.

The restoration of my X account feels (almost) more strange than its disappearance: the hack came out of nowhere with explanation whilst the restoration came out of nowhere but after having been told “No” over and over again.

As one would expect, I am not going to cut my loses and run. My colleagues, with some trepidation, have observed, “If this can happen to her, it can happen to anyone, professional researcher or humble citizen. Whilst the UK has routinely struggled to call itself a nation of “free speech” — concerned as we are with politeness and decorum — it has certainly been freer than this. The slow creep is speeding up into a gentle jog, and I shall be making some rather pertinent inquiries, both to X and the UK Home Office in the near future.

“Who did this?”

I think the ‘why’ of ‘Why has this happened?’ is clear.
But the question of ‘Who did this?’ remains.

Perhaps, this attack had been random. Perhaps, I was damn unlucky to be cut-off right when my Southport coverage was beginning to garner national attention? This is not outside the realm of possibility.

But this hack had been no ordinary hack. Had it been only that my email address had been mined, I need only click, “Forgotten password” to reset my password to throw the hacker out and force him to start over. And I did this. But the effect lasted only seconds.

As soon as I told friends what had happened, I had been met with cries of, “Why didn’t you use two-factor authentication (2FA) on your account!” This is where I tell them, “I did.”

I received the customary text to my phone with a code to input to authenticate my X login. Only…I hadn’t logged in. When I viewed the text, I was thrown out of my account, and my password was changed preventing my reentry.

This meaning that whoever hacked my account not only had my credentials, but had been able to view my phone screen remotely to obtain the authentication code.

Hacking of this kind is not an easy feat (without software and permissions), not to mention really quite illegal. At the time the hack took place, I was on private wifi (I never use public wifi) and had been the only person using network. I’m not the kinds to visit strange website or download random stuff from the internet. It remains unclear how this hacker got access to multiple devices of mine…

As James Titcombe covered in The Telegraph last week, the UK government in the second half of 2024 demanded Twitter/X hand over access to 806 account that posted about Axel Rudakubana and the events in Southport.

The data they requested included, people’s email, internet addresses and an account’s private messages.

As the COVID lockdowns taught the people of the United Kingdom, the UK Government is not averse to spying on its critics. The Ministry of Defence’s 77th Brigade — the 'information warfare' brigade — was a scheme established to keep a close eye on politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the pandemic response. There ambition? They claim the exist only to monitor ‘overseas threats’ of disinformation.

“These units used publicly available data, including material shared on social media platforms, to assess UK disinformation trends and narratives.”

The MOD further state that they “do not target individuals or take any action that could impact anyone’s ability to discuss and debate issues freely” whilst at the same time stating their goal is to “adapt the behaviour of adversaries”.

Jokes (I think?) aside, this hasn’t come without consequences.

I have been cut-off from my main source of communication. Losing my account not only cut me off from generating work, but stymied my ability to report further on the Southport cover-up.

Worse still, I have been cut-off from a great number of my contacts in Southport - including families impacted by the attack. They reached out through Twitter/X because it gave them anonymity and control over their disclosures. I had promised each of them that I would not abandon them or their community in the aftermath; I promised I would not run away, and drop their case, once the trial was over.

And yet, in being cut-off from X without warning, I have been unable to contact them, and they have been prevented from contacting me; and that promise has been broken despite my greatest efforts.

My reputation has also taken a hit.

Knowing people believe I could break my word has caused me much anxiety and heartache. Friends, colleagues, and long-time supporters reached out, asking, "Where the hell are you?!"

They assumed I had either: a) given into government pressure to stop investigating Southport, or, b) had a mental breakdown after covering the massacre.

This could not be further from the truth — I am alive, well, and stubborn as ever!

“What have you been doing whilst you have been away?”

Whilst I have not been online, I have certainly not been idle! Beyond being in endless communication with Twitter/X about being hacked, I was privileged to once again join my colleagues at the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship 2025 in London.

I have also been filming lots of interviews — including with

Andrew Gold

,

The Jolly Heretic

and

Courage Media

.

I have also been writing lots of essays which are due out in the next few days and weeks! I thrilled to have my first feature coming out in the The European Conservative Spring 2025 print edition — with the cover based upon my essay!

I tackle the subject of grooming gangs and the Southport massacre and why white, working class, English girls are considered reasonable collateral damage in the pursuit of a "multicultural" Europe.

I have also been reviewing more books for the The Critic Magazine, due out in print in the May 2025 edition.

First, I look at how warring immigrant drug gangs has turned Sweden into one of the most unsafe countries in Europe in Diamant Salihu’s When Noboby’s Listening. Then, I take a behind-the-scenes tour of Britain’s crippled immigration system in Nicola Kelly’s Anywhere But Here.

You can pre-order future editions of the The Critic Magazines here.

Update

After 2 months, my Twitter account was restored back to me. In the middle of the night, I received an email from Twitter apologising for the ban and gave me a link in order to restore access back to me. No explanation was offered to me, nor any indication as to whether I can expect to have this happen again.

Whilst I am glad to have the account back — I am able to work and talk to you all again — I am uneasy at the casual nature by which I was cut off, and restored, to public life.

I shall be investigating this further. If this can happen to me, with the contacts I can leverage to get this kind of thing sorted, then it can happen to anyone. I shall be making some pointed FOI requests into government surveillance and policing of ‘public attitudes’ and Subject Access Requests to see if I can get a glimpse of what happened in my case.

If you are not yet following me on Twitter/X, you can find more of my robust and pithy commentary over there 👇