THE PERSON BEHIND a number of Twitter accounts parodying the chief executive of media organisation Northcliffe looks set to have their identity revealed.

Last week Northcliffe Media filed a legal action in a bid to find out the identity of the person behind the accounts which took shots at the organisation’s chief executive Steve Auckland, in particular the account @UnSteveDorkland aka NotSteveDorkland.

Northcliffe Media is a newspaper publisher owned by the conglomerate Daily Mail and General Trust.

The BBC reports that Auckland released a statement, saying that the action was taken in order to protect staff from harassment.

Press Gazette reports that the person behing the spoof account has been contacted by Twitter warning that it will release information about the account holder’s identity by 1 August. Twitter also advised the user to contact an attorney, or seek the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the American Civil Liberties Union.

The person behind the account has told the BBC that he is not in a position to hire a lawyer in the US, but blogger Guido Fawkes tweeted yesterday that he was coming to his aid:

NotSteveDorkland has rejected claims that his tweets have been offensive, and said that his knowledge of Northcliffe Media meant that he “got lucky on a number of guesses”.

In a blog post he has described himself as a “wry observer of Northcliffe for a number of years” and said that since Steve Auckland’s arrival “the fun and satisfaction of working for a Northcliffe business had gone”.

He also said that the intention of the parody was 100 per cent fun, and:

I truly cannot believe that Northcliffe is spending its resources – both time and money – in this fruitless pursuit.

Guido Fawkes’ blog reports that the owner of the spoof account will be holding discussions with a San Francisco lawyer this afternoon.