A twitter backlash erupted this past week, as a tweet from the official Vodafone UK twitter site said “is fed up of dirty homo's and is going after beaver”.

Vodafone is also the majority stake holder in South Africa's mobile phone giant, Vodacom.

The comment was quickly removed but not before being retweeted on the micro blogging site, with several users questioning whether Vodafone's twitter account had been hacked.

Since the comment, Vodaphone has been tweeting multiple users with the reply: “We weren't hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We're very sorry”.