Pfizer quickly responded by taking down the page, but not before their 24,000 fans were potentially exposed to anti-Pfizer messages
Last evening Siren web developer Andy Babbitt saw an interesting news item from Pfizer in his Facebook feed. He quickly took some screenshots when he realized that the Facebook page of Pfizer had been hacked. Pfizer quickly responded by taking down the page, but not before their 24,000 fans were potentially exposed to anti-Pfizer messages and some angry language. Ongoing online brand monitoring is important, as well as a crisis communication plan.
I’m not going to show the screenshots because I don’t want to perpetuate this hatred and support this kind of activity. However, it’s a reminder that there are plenty of people who have strong anti-pharma views. Just as with any website, there is always a risk of hackers and security is important.
There are other pharma Facebook pages, such as Johnson & Johnson and Boehringer Ingelheim, with walls that are open to comments. They wouldn’t even require any hacking to take over their feeds like this. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. What do you think?
(Image courtesy of Birgerking on Flickr).
About Eileen O'Brien
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Check out Chris Truelove’s post on this topic where Pfizer’s Ray Kerin says they are still committed to Facebook: http://bit.ly/oVris2.
Jim Edwards in a BNET article links to my original Pfizer Facebook post in his hacking article: http://bit.ly/ntmJpL.
I’d completely forgotten about it: http://bit.ly/n93AQC!
Kudos to Pfizer for quickly getting their Facebook page back up! http://facebook.com/pfizer