An “Elon Musk” scam has begun raiding Twitter users’ timelines. Announcing that he had left his CEO job at Tesla, Elon Musk is now unexpectedly generous in giving away digital currency to random people. Fake accounts claim to be doing “Bitcoic” giveaways and welcome users to join their forged cryptocurrency giveaways.
These types of scams have been more frequent. In the last week, hackers have started running them via Twitter’s ad service. How does this work?
Hackers portray verified accounts while attempting to make fast cash off the back of the cryptocurrency mania. Accounts that have been turned off by hackers include Pantheon Books, the US Politician Frank Pallone Jr. and film production business Pathe UK. They had their names and photos altered before sending out tweets publicizing their fraud. The lads behind the scams billed the tweets as sponsored tweets and got them on Twitter users’ timelines. And yep, they work: one account raised $170,000.
“Impersonating another individual to deceive users is a clear violation of the Twitter Rules,” a company spokesperson said. “Twitter has also substantially improved how we tackle cryptocurrency scams on the platform. In recent weeks, user impressions have fallen by a multiple of 10 in recent weeks as we continue to invest in more proactive tools to detect spammy and malicious activity. This is a significant improvement on previous action rates.”
Twitter workers have been working hard to remove the species since the scam starts. Attempts are being made to enforce actions to prevent people’s accounts from undergoing substantial changes, blocking name changes. They are still building new ways to curb the scams.
