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Nigel Huddleston came under cyber-attack recently, as the campaign for this pivotal marginal seat hots up.

Last month Nigel Huddleston’s Facebook site ‘Nigel Huddleston for Luton South’ mysteriously disappeared while at about the same time someone pretending to be Nigel Huddleston and using the username ‘conshuddleston’ set up a twitter feed and then sent ‘tweets’ to neighbouring MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, Peter Lilley, and Conservative blogger, Guido Fawkes, saying that ‘I may stand down at the next Election in Luton South’.

In order to ‘stand down’ one has to be the MP in the first place, so the twitterer’s odd wording led several actual friends of Nigel Huddleston who had become followers of this ‘conshuddleston’ twitterer to contact Nigel asking if he really was ‘standing down’ and alerting him to the possibility of online impersonation. 

Realising he was under cyber-attack, Nigel Huddleston asked Twitter and Facebook to investigate.  The fake ‘conshuddleston’ twitter site is now inactive and is being investigated by Twitter customer support.  Nigel’s Facebook site was quickly reinstated by Facebook after they investigated. Nigel does not know who is behind either of these cyber-attacks.

Nigel Huddleston said:
“The taking down of my Facebook site was inconvenient as I was using it to help co-ordinate a campaign action day and promote fundraising events, but while it was down I relied on my other sites and more traditional communication tools instead.  There is no substitute for face to face campaigning and I only use new media tools to supplement my off-line campaigning activities not instead of them.

I’m taking the whole episode as a compliment. People don’t go to such lengths to disrupt and confuse the campaign of someone who they don’t think can win.  As the bookies favourtite to win I can anticipate further dirty tricks as we get closer to the election.  But as they say, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.”