By John Ikani
Elon Musk says he is taking legal action against the holder of a Twitter account that tracks his private jet, arguing it put his son at risk.
The account, @ElonJet run by Florida college student Jack Sweeney, had over 500,000 followers.
Its owner Jack Sweeney, 20, used publicly available flight-tracking information to tweet every time Musk’s jet took off and landed.
The account was suspended on December 14 after incident where somebody followed Musk’s family.
“Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood,” Musk tweeted, referring to his 2-year-old son X Æ A-12.
“Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family.”
He added that any account revealing people’s real-time locations will be suspended “as it is a physical safety violation”.
It is worthwhile to note that Sweeney is in charge of dozens of other accounts that track the private flights of wealthy Americans, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.
Many of those accounts – including one tracking aircraft associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and another monitoring celebrity jets – appeared to be suspended on Twitter as well on Wednesday afternoon.
Musk had long taken issue with the @ElonJet account, and once reportedly offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete it.
Sweeney told US media outlets that Musk ultimately told him it did not feel right to pay to have the account shut down.
Last month, Musk addressed Sweeney’s popular tracking account as a “direct safety risk,” but promised to allow the university student to continue running it in the name of free speech.
But Musk tweeted on Wednesday evening: “Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.”
Twitter’s Help Center has tweeted an updated media policy that begins: “You may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”
