Snowden Gets 47GB Of Email Notifications After Joining Twitter And Not Checking Settings

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden received a staggering 47GB of notifications after he missed a vital step when joining up to Twitter.

Snowden joined the social network this week causing a media flurry, but he forgot to change his default settings meaning that he was sent email notifications for every single interaction on his account.

Using his new username @Snowden, he later tweeted: “I forgot to turn off notifications. Twitter sent me an email for each: Follow, Favourite, Retweet. 47 gigs of notifications. #lessonlearned”

The former U.S. government contractor who famously leaked top secret data from the National Security Agency (NSA) is now a privacy activist.

After joining Twitter, Snowden rapidly accrued more than 1m followers in just a few days, though he still follows just one account - his former employer, the NSA.

Now a director at Freedom of the Press, which supports ‘cutting-edge transparency journalism’, Snowden has only tweeted a handful of times with his debut tweet simply reading: Can you hear me now?’.

He later quipped: “Uncovering mass surveillance is starting to look like viable social media strategy”.