Despite the fact that Michael Dell spends $2.7 million on security for his family, his daughter Alexa foiled guards’ best efforts by using social media to tell the world where she was.
Billionaire Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell spends $2.7 million a year on a security team for his family. But his efforts to keep his loved ones out of the public eye were thwarted recently by his teenage daughter’s Twitter habit.
Alexa Dell dished intimate details about her and her family’s life, including their exact whereabouts, on the microblogging site until her father’s security detail pulled the plug on her accounts last week, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
Prior to the shutdown, the 18-year-old had been an avid sharer on the 140-character platform. Her followers knew when she was in New York, where she was going shopping and when she was planning to travel.
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She even posted a photo of an invitation to her high school graduation dinner, which included the celebration’s time, date and location.
And last week, Alexa posted information about the family’s jaunt to Fiji, complete with an Instagram photo of her brother, Zachary Dell, enjoying a luxurious buffet on the family jet.
The photo made a quick appearance on the Tumblr site “Rich Kids of Instagram,” which chronicles the lives of those under 30 with apparently limitless bank accounts.
The snapshot was later taken down.
By Friday, Michael Dell’s security team had shut down Alexa’s Twitter account, as well.
Dell Inc. officials declined to comment on the 18-year-old’s overshare.
But Jason Thorsett, director of operations at security firm Custom Protective Services, says that the billionaire’s security team was likely outraged by Alexa’s social media presence.
“I’m sure they called the dad and shut it down,” Thorsett told Businessweek. “It’s innocent on the kids’ behalf, but social networking has become the bane of our existence.”
Thorsett added that social media has made the work of security teams, whose number one concern is kidnapping, more difficult because guards are not trained to use sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
“Twitter is the worst because it’s so instantaneous,” Thorsett said. “You get that GPS location of exactly where you are. It’s just insane.”
Michael Dell, reportedly worth $15.9 billion, came up with the idea for Dell computers when he was a freshman at University of Texas at Austin.
Since taking his company public in 1988, he’s landed the 41st spot on Forbes Magazine’s Billionaires’ List.
He lives with his wife, Susan, and four children in a massive 33,000-square-foot mega mansion in Austin, Texas.
croberts@nydailynews