The Daily Sceptic asked me to write this article:

I was on the Mike Graham sh…

Read more

The incredible story of Cambridge University’s youngest ever black professor Jason Arday has exploded across even mainstream media. It exposes the failings of Britain’s elite universities. My own article in today’s Daily Sceptic addresses the story. Allegations of plagiarism, an embellished personal narrative and institutional deference to Equality, Di…

Read more

In my view, the <Queen Mary University of London relationship> ensured that significant long-term benefits accrue…

Read more

Nathan Cofnas accused Cambridge University of covering up extensive plagiarism in the PhD thesis of one of its leading advocates of DEI (di…

Read more

Read more

My new book will be published on 31 July 2026. Details here.

Below is Chapter 4 from the book:

Chapter 4: Far-left Groupthink and Political Bias

“Socialism in general has a record …

Read more

Below is a section from my new book which is due for release on 24 July 2026. It will be available on amazon priced £11.99 in the UK and $15.99 in the USA

Predatory journals, fake conferences, and plagiarism (from Chapter 6 “Corrupting Peer Review”)

Alongside the well-known problems of peer review and academic publishing incentives, another development ov…

Read more

Introduction

I have been trying hard to ignore the latest wave of Hantavirus fearmongering in both mainstream and alternative media, …

Read more

I have just completed the draft of my new book “The Capture of Academia: How Universities Shape Power, Silence Dissent, and Influence Society”. I will be putting some excerpts from it here on Substack, starting today with a section from the chapter titled “Corrupting Peer Review”. It is about the metric widely used to assess the quality of individual re…

Read more

This is a conversation space exclusively for paid subscribers, like a group chat or live hangout. You can post questions and comments to us and to other paid subscribers.

Join chat

Read more

In the short video above, I explain why it is at least possible that my recent suspension from X was triggered by a post about Tottenham Hotspur’s young player Mikey Moore.

Moore was diagnosed with myocarditis in 2024/25. Like most professional footballers, he was very likely vaccinated against Covid in 2022. My post simply asked whether that was the case:

Note, I did not claim that the vaccine caused his condition. I asked a factual question about vaccination status in a context where mandates for professional and academy footballers were widely reported at the time.

The post attracted significant attention, along with a predictable wave of hostile replies and quote-posts. It was the last post I made before being suspended the following day.

Of course there may be an unrelated explanation for my suspension. But given what followed, that explanation is far from obvious.

A suspension without explanation

My account had only recently been recovered after a hack, as I reported last month. I regained access, restored security, and resumed normal use. Within days, it was suspended again, as I reported in the following earlier video yesterday:

The reason given by X was “suspicious activity” and an inability to verify my identity.

This makes little sense:

• I have a paid, verified (blue tick) account

• Two-factor authentication is enabled

• I was issued a backup recovery code by X itself

Despite this, I am now locked out, unable to verify my identity, and caught in an automated loop with no meaningful human response.

The practical consequences

This is not a trivial inconvenience.

My account had over 94,000 followers, and in the past few weeks, between the hack and the suspension, I have already lost more than 2,000.

The timing is particularly damaging. I was preparing to promote my forthcoming book:

The Capture of Academia: How Universities Shape Power, Silence Dissent, and Influence Society

Losing access at this point significantly disrupts that effort.

A wider concern

It would be easy to dismiss this as a technical failure, but it is troubling that a verified user, with full security measures in place, can:

• ask a legitimate question

• receive coordinated hostility

• and then lose access to their platform without clear explanation or recourse

Even though there is no explicit censorship, the outcome is the same.

Final thought

I cannot say with certainty that the Mikey Moore post caused my suspension.

But I can say that the sequence of events, combined with the inability, or unwillingness,of X to resolve the issue, raises serious questions about how such platforms operate.

If accounts can effectively disappear under these conditions, then the line between technical failure and functional censorship becomes very thin indeed.

Appendix

Here is the letter I sent to the London Office of X by recorded delivery (it was signed for today):

Fenton Letter 21 April 2026 Redacted

67.5KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Since August 2025 Naomi has been a resident in …

Read more

10 April 2026 Update: Having finally regained access to my X account it was suspended again on 5 April and I have been unable to gain access since. The message from X simply said that there was ‘suspicious activity’ on my account. As I have 2-factor authentication, I know that this time there could not have been another attempt to hack my account - I received no notification of an attempted sign-in. So this time it is likely the suspension is due to my posting articles critical of the Covid vaccine or supportive of Israel.

On 18th March 2026 I lost control of my X acount account as I described here:

How I got (limited) control of my account back

After X Support told me they could not verify that I was the account holder, I sent multiple follow-up emails. There was no response until the early hours of 24 March.

That email said they were prepared to return my account if I could provide an email address not previously linked to any X account. I did so and, after a somewhat tortuous process involving verification codes sent to that new address, I regained limited control (see below for the limitations).

Many others who were hacked in the same way have been unable to recover their accounts. If this helps anyone, I do not believe it is coincidental that a recorded delivery “Letter Before Action” I sent was delivered and signed for on the afternoon of 23 March.

X Legal Letter Redacted Version

348KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

It is also possible that appeals by public figures, notably my friends Leilani Dowding and Steve Kirsch may have triggered X to act.

Limitations on my account

Because X still classifies my account as “compromised,” it will not allow me to add my mobile number as a verification method. Since email is currently the only available verification route, I was unable to set up two-factor authentication for the first 24 hours after regaining access, because X initially would not send the required code to my email address.

The more serious issue, however, is the scale of the damage caused while the account was under the hacker’s control.

After sending a spam “vote for me” direct message (with a malicious link) to all my mutual followers on 20 March, the attackers began posting spam publicly. Not sporadically, but continuously: the bot was posting roughly once per second, pausing only intermittently to repost content from accounts I follow.

By the time I regained access, there were thousands of spam posts and reposts.

I reported this to X Support. They responded that all content posted during the compromise had been removed. That is not the case. Despite further follow-ups, the posts remain.

I have spent hours trying to delete them manually, but it is like trying to empty an ocean one bucket at a time. While there are third-party tools that can bulk-delete posts, they require sharing account access details, which is something I am understandably reluctant to do.

For now, anyone visiting my timeline will see little but pages of spam like the following:

One small silver lining is that these posts appear to have generated almost no impressions, which suggests very few people actually saw them. While that is reassuring, it does rather underline a separate issue, namely, just how effectively my account seems to have been shadow banned all along. Even a hacker posting at industrial scale couldn’t get any reach out of it.

Other ramifactions of the hacking

I have lost around 1,500 followers since the hack, including several large accounts.

The attackers also blocked a number of accounts on my behalf, among them some prominent users who I know had raised awareness about the hack. Given that I have also blocked accounts recently in response to antisemitic abuse, it is now extremely difficult to distinguish which blocks were made by me and which were made by the attackers.

Final thoughts

This experience has exposed serious weaknesses in X’s account security and recovery processes.

Support responses were slow, inconsistent, and at times obstructive. More troublingly, even after I reported the hack, the platform allowed automated abuse to continue unchecked, resulting in the mass distribution of malicious links via direct messages and the flooding of my account with spam.

That should not be possible on a platform of this scale, especially as many people reported my account as hacked.

Regaining access to my account ultimately required persistence, external pressure, and, quite likely, legal escalation. Many users facing similar attacks will not have those options.

If X cannot reliably protect accounts, respond promptly to verified compromise reports, and restore control without unnecessary barriers, then users are left dangerously exposed.

What’s clear right now is that when things go wrong, you will be largely on your own.

UK news has been chock full of scare stories about the meningitis ‘outbreak’ in Kent, accompanied by the vaccination of students and with high strength antibiotics handed out like sweets.

Being busy on other things we’ve ignored it, but now news is coming out in the press that the ‘cases’ are now being downgraded and are now ‘past their peak’.

Astute read…

Read more

25 March 2026: There is an update to this story here.

On 18 March 2026, my blue-tick verified account on X https://twitter.com/profnfenton, with 93,400 followers, was hacked and taken over by scammers. What happened next is arguably even more alarming: despite reporting the breach immediately and providing proof of my identity, X refused to act, allowing the account to subsequently be used to target others.

This is not just a personal story. It exposes a serious failure in the platform’s ability, or willingness, to protect its users, even those paying for verification.

The Moment I Lost Control

At around 3:00pm on 18 March, I was actively using X on my mobile phone when the app suddenly stopped and presented me with a login screen. I was asked to re-enter my username and password. Assuming this was routine, I did so.

My password was rejected. Within seconds, I realised I had lost access to my account.

Ten minutes later, a friend alerted me that my account was already posting an obvious cryptocurrency scam.

Immediate Report, Immediate Rejection

I reported the hack straight away using X’s official web support system. The response I received was extraordinary: they said they could not assist further because they were unable to verify my identity, even though the account is blue-tick verified with 93,400 followers.

Meanwhile, the attackers had already taken steps to lock me out completely.

Locked Out While Criminals Took Over

I later discovered that the hackers had changed the email address associated with my account, which was my old University email address. A message from X, timestamped 15:03, confirmed the change.

I submitted multiple follow-up requests to X from both my primary email and the original university address. I also provided clear proof of identity, including a copy of my passport. I received no response.

From Public Scam to Private Exploitation

For the first two days, the attackers did nothing to my account other than leaving up the post with the cryptocurrency scam. But then things got much more serious.

On the evening of 20 March, I was alerted that the scammers had removed the public post, so that anyone visiting my profile would see only my normal content. At the same time, they began sending direct messages from my account to people I follow and who follow me.

These messages asked recipients to “vote for me” via a malicious link, a phishing attempt designed to scam others.

X Allowed This to Continue

At no point did X suspend or even temporarily restrict my account, despite having been notified immediately that it had been compromised.

Many friends who have very large verified accounts (such as, for example, Leilani Dowding) posted messages alerting X_support to the problem, but these were also ignored.

The platform effectively allowed criminals to continue operating under my identity, targeting my network, while ignoring repeated warnings and evidence.

I find this shocking. At the very least, X could have blocked the account while the situation was investigated. Instead, it remained fully active in the hands of scammers.

How It May Have Happened

A few days before the hack, I had received a message via WhatsApp that appeared to come from Laura Perrins who has since posted an article about how she was hacked. It asked me to vote for her via a link.

The link led to a page that looked like an X login screen. I entered my credentials but quickly realised it was likely a scam and immediately changed my password.

In hindsight, it is possible that my account had already been compromised or flagged as a target at that point.

A Wider Warning

This incident raises serious concerns about the security of X accounts, particularly those that are verified and paid for. Blue-tick verification is supposed to signal authenticity and trust. In my case, it provided no protection at all.

More worryingly, the platform’s failure to act did not just affect me, it potentially exposed many others to scams carried out in my name.

If this can happen to a high-profile, verified account, and the platform still refuses to intervene, it raises an urgent question: who, exactly, is being protected? The damage is not just technical, it is reputational and professional. Many of the people I follow, including highly influential individuals who also follow me, have received scam messages appearing to come directly from my account. There is no guarantee they will realise these messages were not genuinely from me.

At the same time, I have been completely cut off from a platform I rely on professionally. I used my account to promote my last book in 2024 and was about to begin publicising my next to my 93,400 followers when this happened. That opportunity has now been derailed, and the credibility of the account itself may be permanently compromised. Years spent building a trusted audience have, in effect, been handed over to scammers, who it seems are currently getting more practical support from X than I am.

Links

Steve Kirsh has published an article about this:

Steve Kirsch's newsletter

The "vote for me" scam: How to lose your X account permanently!

Executive summary…

Read more

5 months ago · 162 likes · 32 comments · Steve Kirsch

And here is Laura Perrin’s article:

Laura’s Substack

I was hacked on Twitter.

Well I tell you folks it has been a real humdinger over the last week, I can tell you. On Saturday my Twitter account was hacked and has since been stolen. Yes, arguably it was all my fault. I had received a DM on the previous Wednesday from a colleague – let’s say – asking me to vote for him and I did so. I clicked on a link and ended up entering my pa…

Read more

5 months ago · 10 likes · 2 comments · Laura Perrins

25 March 2026: There is an update to this story here.

I’m close to finishing my book on The Capture of Universities, which deals with ideological capture, governance failure, and institutional decay. While drafting it, I included the story that follows, but in the end decided it was off-topic.

It is, however, too good not to tell.

Read more

Read more

Ralph Lataster, from the University of Sydney, recently published a paper in the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine on excess deaths in Australia. In his paper he concluded that:

“Combined with increasing evidence that the efficacy/effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines have been greatly exaggerated, including acknowledgements fr…

Read more

Jacqui Deevoy‘s book, Murdered by the State: Involuntary Euthanasia in Plain Sight was released in December 2024 and contains the accounts of forty-two family members of people who died in British hospitals, mostly during the Covid event. The family members contend that their loved ones were euthanised, or murdered, through being given morphine and mida…

Read more

I posted an article shortly after the event but video post-production took some time and I never got around to posting the video of t…

Read more