Sarkozy Facebook page is hacked

Fake president says he “will not stand in 2012” due to exceptional circumstances facing the country

PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy’s Facebook page has been pirated for the second time in two days.

A message was left, supposedly from Sarkozy himself, saying he would not be standing for the presidency in 2012. It follows a previous, similar, message that was added to his page on January 23.

The last message from the real President Sarkozy was an update on Monday on his hopes for the G8 and G20 summits which followed a short message saying his page had been pirated “perhaps to remind me that no system is infallible”.

That first message, also saying he would not run in 2012, was filled with text-speak spellings and missed-out accents; and included an invite to all to a final farewell apéro géant party outside a noted Paris restaurant where Mr Sarkozy had celebrated his election in 2007.

More than 350,000 friends of Mr Sarkozy also received automatic messages from Facebook telling them of “his” messages.

Internet site ZDNet has advised Mr Sarkozy to find himself a new, stronger password: one with at least 10 characters with both upper-case and lower-case letters plus numbers.