A recent Twitter update the contained offensive language, seemed to have come from the official Vodafone UK profile, leading to concerns that the account has been hacked.

The tweet which came in at 15:47 GMT read - "Vodafone UK is fed up of dirty homo's and is going after beaver [sic]". The update has now been deleted.

Customers instantly started to reply to the tweet, expressing their anger over the obscene language. Vodafone has, however, reassured customers and other tweeters that the account has not been hacked, and it was just the doing of internal staff.

An official update then came in from the company on Twitter - "We weren't hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We're very sorry".

The update has led to the suspension of a member of the staff.