Julian Assange's Twitter account has become active again, hours after the founder of the controversial Wikileaks organisation seemingly deleted his profile.

It is understood the @JulianAssange account was deleted between midnight and 1am GMT and reactivated at around 3pm on Christmas Day.

The only message visible on his account read: 'Sorry, that page doesn't exist!'.

As yet, it remains unclear whether the social media site decided to delete the account or if the 46-year-old made the decision to deactivate it himself.

The controversial hacker has been wanted by various authorities since his organisation began leaking sensitive material into the public domain in 2006.

Previously the 45-year-old had been living in the embassy in London since 2012, after seeking asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden to face a rape allegation.

He feared the claims would see him extradited to the United States and tried over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents.

Ecuador's Foreign Minster Ricardo Patino said Mr Assange's human rights would be at risk if he were extradited.