Center Parcs learns why you don't just delete your account

Center Parcs, the chain of liminal forest resorts in Britain and Ireland, deleted its Twitter account in January. But it didn't realize that meant the name would become available for registration, and it was soon squatted. Fortunately for the company, the IT consultant who nabbed the handle, Carl Lennon, did the right thing and got in touch to warn them. Unfortunately for the company, it chose to ignore him and he eventually went to the media instead.

The consequences could have been rough: "He has had requests from customers on a range of topics, including requests to change dates, rearrange payments, and add more people to bookings."

"I don't know the legality of replying to their messages," he said, adding he has decided not to reply at all and only took on the handle as an experiment.

But he said "someone malicious" could easily respond, asking customers to send payment details or other sensitive information to the X account.

Mr Lennon says he tried contacting Center Parcs through various channels but had not been able to get a response, except for an acknowledgement of an email he had sent.

Anyway, you leave the account open and monitor it.

Center Parcs, I've read, is (or was) conceived as an admirably long-term device to turn otherwise undevelopable forest into residential/commercial-zoned land. The resorts are the "car washes" that make it legal and whether they make money or not isn't a big deal while they get sold and resold among private equity groups. Even many millions made or lost hardly matters when the land will one day be worth billions. But it is profitable.

The early TV ads for Center Parcs land like hauntological horror movie setups now. Center Parcs is quite weird, there are many pools and tubes there, and the wikipedia article is full of lines like "Elveden Forest re-opened after a major re-design, less susceptible to the potential spread of fire."