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Airline tracks Twitter user’s real-world ID, publishes her flight number

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Geekz Snow
Airline tracks Twitter user’s real-world ID, publishes her flight number

A security consultant who took to Twitter to call out inappropriate comments made by a Southwest Airline flight attendant received a surprising response when the airline’s official Twitter account included her flight number in its reply while the flight had yet to take off.

The consultant, peeved that the airline tracked down her real-world identity and then broadcast her location, sent a follow-up saying the number amounted to personally identifiable information that the airline was obligated to keep private.

The conversation started out with a tweets like this one, reporting that an attendant on the flight she was boarding was making jokes some passengers found to be offensive:

A Southwest representative using the name Emilia responded with this:

In a follow-up that wasn’t deleted until after Ars asked Southwest for comment, Emilia went on to include the flight number of the plane the consultant was boarding.

Singh told Ars that she believes Emilia used that previous interaction to tie Singh’s Twitter account to her real-world identity.

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