“Elon Musk” scams are raiding Twitter users timelines. Announcing he apparently left his CEO position at Tesla, now Elon Musk is suddenly feeling generous enough to hand out digital currency to random people on Twitter. The fake accounts claim to be giving out “Bitcoic” by inviting people to participate in a fake cryptocurrency giveaway.
Cryptocurrency scams have become more popular recently. Hackers have now started promoting them through Twitter’s ad service. So how do they work?
While trying to make quick money from the cryptocurrency mania, hackers take verified accounts. Accounts that have been hacked are Pantheon Books, US Politician Frank Pallone Jr, and film production company Pathe UK. The hackers would change the names and the profile pictures, and then start tweeting their scams. They use sponsored ad’s to show up on people’s feed. They actually work, one account has 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.”
Ever since these scams have started, Twitter has tried its hardest to remove them all. The company has now come up with strategies to stop accounts from getting major changes, such as blocking name changes. They are still working on new ways to stop the scams.
