In late November 2025, a rumor spread online that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was running its official X account from Tel Aviv, Israel, shortly after a new feature on the social media platform highlighted the location from where accounts were posting.
For example, multiple X users (archived, archived) shared an image purportedly showing the About page of @DHSgov, the official DHS account on tech billionaire Elon Musk’s app. One person wrote: “A major news story has appeared in the X timeline: The ‘US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’ account is registered in Israel and is managed from there.”
(X user @ps_trump)
The image first appeared in a post by @astrrals on X (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 million views and 330,000 likes. The same rumor appeared many times on X. Some posts claimed X turned off the feature 20 minutes after the DHS account’s location was exposed.
The viral screenshot did not include a gray checkmark — which is used for verified accounts of governmental organizations and officials — putting its authenticity in question. Further, on Nov. 25, the account that first posted the screenshot appeared to share information on how it had been created (archived). In other words, it seemed to be an admission that the claim the DHS X account was run from Israel was based on a fabricated screen capture:
We have contacted this account asking for confirmation the claim was a hoax and will update this report should we receive a response.
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%.” As of this writing, 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) 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)
Bier said in an email that X added the localization for the DHS account “with their permission” after the “hoax.” Snopes examined the X About pages of the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Justice and Treasury Department. As Bier said, none of them contained geographical information.
For further reading, we also investigated whether Musk shut down X’s location feature after it revealed two-thirds of X’s “MAGA and far-right accounts” were based in Bangladesh, Nigeria and Russia.
