Over the weekend, the hunt for elusive TVO took a dramatic twist when veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda allegedly “unmasked the account” as being run by three individuals. Andrew Mwenda claimed the twitter account is being run by different guys.
Tom Voltaire Okwalinga aka TVO is an anonymous Facebook account that has for ages pulled the ear of both government oppositionists and supporters alike. The account which has over 103,400 followers, has gained the massive attention by publishing information that is considered inflammatory to the government.
However, what has made the account more famous/infamous is its knack to remain operating even when; countless people have been jailed in connection, High Court in Ireland ordered Facebook to reveal its identity to lawyer Fred Muwema, BBC Africa news icon, Shaka Ssali who interviewed TVO also seemed to be none the wiser, former presidential aspirant Maureen Kyalya supposedly through some clues around, cyber giants around the globe have reportedly been contacted but all attempts have turned out futile. Well, that is until a few days ago.
After Andrew Mwenda, proprietor of The Independent Magazine, launched a daily battle against “radical extremism of Kizza Besigye and his loyal supporters,” it was only a matter of time before he also supposedly discovered the identity of TVO- an account which remains active even when the three alleged faces behind it are plastered all over social media.
“Unmasking Besigye extremist TVO…..Tom Voltaire Okwaliga is a Facebook account run by three radical extremists who support Kizza Besigye and their pictures are below from left to right: Robert Shaka who lives in Kampala, Uganda; Abbey Semuwemba, who lives in UK and Henry Lugasira who lives Canada. They have been helped by a lady I will not name for now,” Mwenda stated in part.
Although the trio remains a mystery, one Robert Shaka who goes with Facebook username Maverick Blutaski, is not facing these suspicions for the first time. In June 2015, Shaka, a cyber-security expert spent some time in the joint over suspicions of him being TVO. This however makes him vulnerable for such accusation given this background.
As news of supposed unmasking of faceless TVO was still settling in, controversial Andrew also unleashed evidence which led him to decipher the mystery. “Proof of who Besigye extremist TVO is,” he stated, “Four twitter accounts were opened using one email address poliko2010@gmail.com – that of Henry Rugasira (now living in Uganda), Robert Shaka (now a dissident in the USA), Tom V Okwalinga and TVOUganda. Shaka and Rugasira are brothers,” reads his post in part.
Contrary to how most reacted to the impossibility of having multiple twitter accounts with one email thereby casting a shadow on Mwenda’s evidence, we contacted some of the cyber giants , and discovered that it actually IS possible. In fact if you goggle “Is it possible to open four twitter accounts with one email”, the answer is affirmative.
“In Gmail, you can add a dot (.) anywhere in the username and all emails address to that new alias will still reach your mailbox. For instance, if your original email address is hello@gmail.com, any emails sent to he.llo@gmail.com or he.ll.o@gmail.com will land in your mailbox because Gmail ignores periods in the email username”, Amit Agarwal a web geek, ex-columnist and founder of Digital inspiration posted on the hugely popular how-to tech website that has been running since 2004.
“And that’s what you can use to trick Twitter. Twitter will consider hello@gmail and he.llo@gmail as two separate and valid email addresses even though they point to the same Gmail Inbox.”, he concluded.
source: https://www.labnol.org/internet/one-email-for-multiple-twitter-accounts
There you go, it’s actually possible.