Shortly after a new feature on X in late November 2025 revealed from where accounts on Elon Musk’s social media platform were posting, a rumor began to spread that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was running its official account from Tel Aviv, Israel.
For example, a post shared a supposed screen capture of the DHS X account’s details (archived):
The screen capture read:
Homeland Security @DHSgov
Date joined July 2008 in Israel
Account based in Tel Aviv, Israel
16 username changes Last on July 2008
Connected via Israel App Store
As of this writing, the post had more than 39.7 million views and 330,000 likes. The same rumor appeared many times on X. Some posts claimed that X turned off the feature 20 minutes after the DHS account’s location was exposed.
Snopes was not able to verify directly that the DHS account’s About page ever showed it had been created in Israel and was posting from there. For this reason, we have left the claim unrated.
It is true that in late November 2025, X began rolling out (archived) a feature that had the result of revealing many accounts that claimed to be based in U.S. were in fact run from other countries.
The previous month, on Oct. 14, Nikita Bier — the company’s head of product — said the social media platform was working on developing this feature (archived) to increase transparency:
It was also true that shortly after launching it, X shut off the part of the new feature that showed where an account was created. Bier confirmed as much on Nov. 22 (archived), saying the “account creation country was incorrect on a very small subset of old accounts.”
He later added the company was working to fix this. On Nov. 23, he said an update (archived) was due in 12 hours and that accuracy would be “99.9%.” Nearly 15 hours later, Snopes had yet to see the feature reactivated on X’s website or iOS app.
After he became aware of the DHS rumor, Bier said it was “fake news” and that @DHSgov, the agency’s official X account (verified with a gray check that indicates a government official or agency) never displayed its localization for security reasons (archived, archived):
However, on the morning of Nov. 24 — after X switched off the part of the new feature that showed the creation country — Snopes verified that the DHS X account’s About page did display a localization, saying it was based in the U.S.:
(X user @DHSgov)
Clicking on the small information button next to the localization brought up a pop up window that read “The country or region that an account is based can be impacted by recent travel or temporary relocation. This data may not be accurate and can change periodically.”
(X.com)
Snopes reached out to X and to Bier, asking why an account verified with a gray check would display its “based in” information after Bier said no such account should show that information. We also asked if there was any possibility that the DHS account was part of the “very small subset of old accounts” for which this geolocalization was incorrect as well as why X would take such precautions given the addresses of U.S. federal agencies were publicly available.
