New X Verification Feature Exposes Israel Operating DHS Account
Inside the fallout from the launch of X's new 'About This Account' feature.
Since coming under new ownership, X has gone to great lengths to restore users’ faith in its platform. The purchase of the company formerly known as Twitter in October 2022 led to Elon Musk’s subsequent rebrand of the platform under the name X, signaling a new chapter in the company’s history in which it looked to transform itself from the graveyard of free speech into one of its shining beacons. That paradigm shift has led to X regaining its status as a true open forum by abandoning its old regime’s dictatorial censorship tactics to usher in a new age built upon the pillars of free speech and transparency. In doing so, it has made tremendous strides in regaining the trust of its users. However, the fallout from the launch of the platform’s latest feature aimed at continuing that commitment to transparency ironically threatens to destroy the goodwill it has worked so hard to restore.
In an effort to achieve greater transparency on the platform, X announced the launch of an ‘About This Account’ feature in October 2025. The feature is designed to show the date an X user joined the platform, the location their account is based out of, changes to usernames, and how their account is connected to the platform. The decision to implement the feature was made in response to calls for greater insight into a user’s location amid concerns of foreign actors using the platform to manipulate political narratives. After being placed in a period of beta testing, the new feature finally began its highly anticipated global rollout on Thursday, November 20th.
Once the feature was launched, countless examples of high-profile accounts whose voices echoed throughout the political discourse on the platform were exposed for their identities conflicting with their claims and political postures. Yet, the most stunning revelation from the new feature came from an official US government account, raising concerns transcending from the realm of online discourse and into that of national security.
Screenshots of the information for the official X account of the United States Department of Homeland Security began circulating, showing it was based in Israel. The DHS currently has an international office in Tel Aviv, where the newly launched ‘About This Account’ feature indicated its X account was based out of. However, the feature also indicated that official account for the DHS joined X in July 2008 from a location based in Israel and that the account was connected via the Israeli app store.
Following this stunning claim, X disabled the ‘About This Account’ feature it had just launched. The best available evidence supporting this claim was preserved by X user @sneedfeedcope, who was able to capture a screen recording showing that the country of origin for the official government account of the DHS was listed as Israel before X was able to take the ‘About This Account’ feature offline.
After the feature was deactivated by X, unrestrained outrage resounded from users across the platform. The decision to deactivate the feature was met with accusations that the measure was taken to obfuscate the political subversion demonstrated by influential accounts on the platform being run by international actors. X soon relaunched the feature, claiming it had been taken offline temporarily in order to resolve errors relating to the locations listed on accounts.
X head of product, Nikita Bier, disavowed the claim made by those circulating the screen recording, which showed that the ‘About This Account’ feature for the DHS previously indicated that the account was based out of Israel. “This is fake news. Location was not available on any gray check account at any point. Furthermore, the DHS has only shown IPs from the United States since account creation.” Although the DHS has an office in Tel Aviv that its official X account could theoretically be operated out of, Bier’s statement that the account’s IP addresses were always shown as being out of the US eliminates that possibility as an excuse for why the location data could have registered on the platform.
Bier elucidated that the ‘About This Account’ feature was shut off because of issues with the accuracy of data indicating which country users’ profiles were created in, citing IP ranges changing over time. Bier then chastised those inquiring into the controversy surrounding the claims made about the DHS X account, stating, “Stop spreading misinformation; you’re just as bad as those engaging in foreign interference.”
Yet, Bier’s pointed retort classifying the claim as “fake news” was contradicted by xAI’s own flagship product. According to X’s AI model, Grok, “The new ‘About This Account’ feature briefly showed DHSgov as based in Israel during rollout, as seen in screenshots. This appears to have been a temporary glitch in the system, corrected shortly after.” Unlike Bier, who stated that the screen recording was fabricated, Grok acknowledged that the information initially shown in the ‘About This Account’ feature for the official DHS account on X it documented was indeed legitimate, attributing the website showing the geolocation data in Israel as being a “glitch.”
Further remarks from Bier remained at odds with the explanation offered by Grok. Bier stated that as a matter of policy, X never shows the location of any official government account in order to protect against acts of terrorism. The company’s claim that it was acting in the interest of national security echoed the trite rhetoric of X’s old regime, used by governments and their appendages alike so often that it has long since become seen as a tacit admission of a cover-up.
It took only hours for the facade that Bier’s claim hid behind to be lifted. After a period of being reformatted to exclude geolocation data once it was relaunched, the ‘About This Account’ once again began to show the locations of official government accounts. While the location of the DHS account was labeled as the United States instead of Israel, it being displayed at all disproved Bier’s claim that the feature was engineered to omit sensitive location data of US government accounts. By relaunching the feature, X completely undermined the explanation Bier gave for why the screen recording showing the account’s initial location in Israel was fake.
The DHS issued its own statement in a tweet on Sunday, November 23rd, in which is rejected the claim made against it. The agency echoed Bier’s assertion that its account was never access by anyone outside of the US, including its own field office in Tel Aviv. X user sneedfeedcope provided an additional screen recording of his initial one which showed his web browser’s settings to display no script was operating on it at the time of the recording that would indicate any manipulation of the video. Despite the extensive efforts the X user made to validate the veracity of the recording, neither X, DHS, nor anyone else on the platform put forward any analysis of the screen recording that met a burden of proof justifying the allegation that it was fabricated.
Despite comprehensive evidence justifying the claims raised about the location of the DHS X account, sources from X and the US government did not put forward any proof beyond conjecture. Their assertions solely relied on arguments based on authority, which demonstrates the pervasive influence of state actors on the platform in-and-of-itself.
The issues surrounding the launch of its ‘About This Account’ feature are not the only controversy X has exposed the influence of the State of Israel on the platform. In early 2024, internet denizens eagerly anticipating the launch of X’s monetization program were left aghast when they saw the platform’s prerequisite identity verification process was entrusted to the company AU10TIX through the payment processor Stripe. AU10TIX was exposed for its CEO Dan Yerushalmi’s extensive ties to Israeli intelligence.
Before serving as the CEO of AU10TIX, Yerushalmi held the same role at Tel Aviv-based American-Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies (CPST). Gil Shwed, the founder of CPST, previously served in Unit 8200, a military intelligence unit within the Israel Defense Forces. Following the revelation that X users would have to hand over sensitive information to a company with deep ties to the Israeli intelligence sphere, users led a crusade against the platform to sever AU10TIX from its fundamental role in the company’s monetization program.
X soon relented, removing AU10TIX from the identity verification process for the platform’s monetization program. The decision was heralded as a landmark event showing X’s genuine commitment to transparency and free speech, as the user-generated opposition campaign served as the catalyst for the change.
Although the decision to move on from AU10TIX restored user’s faith in X, it also enhanced their activism against decisions made by the platform. That emboldened sense of determination to enhance transparency across X served as the crux of why the platform endeavored upon its new ‘About This Account’ feature. Yet, in an effort to continue to slake its users thirst for greater transparency, the cruel irony for X is that the latest feature it designed to verify the authenticity of its content has done more to sow distrust in the platform than to fortify its integrity.