Comedian Russell Brand could be facing a Twitter ban after he tweeted the phone number of a Daily Mail journalist to his more than eight million followers on the social media site.

The tweet was a photo of the business card of the journalist, Neil Sears, which included his mobile phone number. Though it has since been deleted, the image is in breach of Twitter’s usage rules, which state that users must not post private information about other users without their permission. After deleting the tweet, Brand wrote: “That was a bit nuts. He put it thru (sic) me door with ‘please call’ on it. They’re bothering me mum.”

Some of Brand’s followers replied to the initial tweet saying that they had already prank-called Sears, and the image was retweeted hundreds of times before being deleted. Others have called on the comedian to be banned from the site. Twitter’s terms of service state that “Twitter reserves the right to immediately terminate your account without further notice in the event that, in its judgement, you violate these rules or the terms of service.”

In 2012, British journalist Guy Adams was banned from the site after he tweeted the e-mail address of an executive at US TV network NBC after criticising the network over their coverage of the London Olympics.