Every day, the government uses social media services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to communicate with you and provide easy access to government benefits and services.
But unlike most government websites, which are hosted on a .mil or a .gov domain, social media sites are hosted on commercial domains. Without the .gov or the .mil, it can be difficult to determine which social media accounts are official government sources of information and which are impersonators.
To help solve that problem, we recently launched a social media registry in English and Spanish, where you can confirm the validity of a variety of government social media accounts.
The registry supports 22 of the most widely used social media services, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It tracks accounts that represent official U.S. government agencies, organizations, or programs, including accounts managed by federal agencies, elected officials (not campaign accounts), members of the President’s cabinet and heads of agencies.
So far 40 agencies and offices and 2,000 social media accounts are included in the registry. That number will continue to grow as the registry develops.
To check the validity of a government social media account, visit the social media registry and copy and paste the URL of a social media account to verify it.
If an account doesn’t appear and you know it’s a valid government account, you can contact the agency or office and request they add the account to the registry.
Visit the social media registry in English or Spanish to check the validity of government social media accounts.