A TWITTER ACCOUNT which purported to be that of Gary Glitter, the disgraced former pop star, has been revealed to be a fake aimed at highlighting safety on the internet.

The @OfficialGlitter account gained over 15,000 followers since joining Twitter earlier this week. Tweets send from the account described Glitter’s ‘plans’ for an upcoming album, an autobiography and a world tour.

However the man who tweeted from the account now says that the account was a social experiment to highlight internet safety.

In a Tumblr post, the man behind the account, who gave his name as ‘Ben’, said the account was to “highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social  networking sites and to discover and question public morality”.

‘Ben’ cited the fact that there is no legislation in the UK to stop sex offenders from using social network sites or computers, saying:

Twitter have [sic] no age requirement to become a member of their site and although Facebook terms and conditions require you to be 13 or over, parents are allowing their children to access and register on these websites, simply because “their friends do it”, the parents don’t know the dangers about their children being online or quite simply because they don’t care or see any real dangers.

He highlighted the number of supportive comments people made towards the account when they believed it was actually Glitter behind it.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, was convicted of possessing child pornography in 1999 and served time in prison. He moved to Vietnam upon his release, where he was convicted of obscene acts with children in 2006 and sentenced to serve three years in prison.

Read the full post explaining why the @OfficialGlitter account was set up

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