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Twitter Finally Targets Crypto Scammers, Experiments on Elon Musk

July 25, 2018

Twitter is at long last tackling cryptocurrency scam artists who pretend to be high-profile, verified members like Elon Musk.

The scammers use bots to create Twitter profiles that are nearly identical to leading figures in the world of tech and cryptocurrency, pretending to give away Ethereum and other coins. The cyber thieves tell unsuspecting victims to send them a small amount of crypto and promise to send a larger amount in return, which never happens.

To fight back, Twitter has started to immediately suspend users with unverified accounts who change their display name to Elon Musk.

“As part of our continuing efforts to combat spam and malicious activity on our service, we’re testing new measures to challenge accounts that use terms commonly associated with spam campaigns. We are continually refining these detections based on changes in spammy activity,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Verge.

The change comes soon after the real Elon Musk tweeted about how impressive the scam artists are at impersonating him and trying to manipulate his fan base.

Musk’s tweet triggered a fast response from Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, whose account is notoriously copied at a rapid rate. Buterin pioneered the technique of adding “Not giving away ETH” to his display name to try to deter the malicious activity.

I want to know who is running the Etherium scambots! Mad skillz …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2018

I do wish @elonmusk's first tweet about ethereum was about the tech rather than the twitter scambots……..@jack help us please? Or someone from the ETH community make a layer 2 scam filtering solution, please? https://t.co/biVRshZmne

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 9, 2018

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