Can Twitter Stop Its Crypto Hacks And Scams?
Elon Musk’s 22.5 million Twitter followers were surprised Thursday to see the entrepreneur promising to give away 400 ETH. Given that Musk has not disclosed any investment in ETH or other cryptocurrencies, most of his followers called ‘scam’.
This is not the first time this has happened and Twitter doesn’t seem be doing a lot to combat this problem. Back in February, Elon Musk’s account was taken over by a hacker promising his followers a similar reward. Elon Musk was vocal about the whole issue, publicly asking for answers on who was running the scam bots that had taken his account.
Musk Was Not The First
Musk is not been the first notable person to be hacked or impersonated on Twitter. John McAfee was reportedly hacked last year when he started sending out Tweets on ‘Coin of the day’, after identifying this and taking over his account he sent out this tweet;
“Urgent: My account was hacked. Twitter has been notified. The coin of the day tweet was not me. As you all know… I am not doing a coin of the day anymore!!!!”
Following this hack, Charlie Lee (the creator of Litecoin) was also reportedly giving away free coins but this time they did not hack his account but rather impersonated him. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, also has many impersonator accounts on Twitter, having to result to add “Non-giver of Ether” to his handle, to ensure followers easily identify him, all while sending out a clear message that he is not giving away coins.
What Is Twitter Doing About It?
When Elon Musk was first hacked at the beginning of the year, Vitalik Buterin publicly requested Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, do something about it. He went as far as offering to give Twitter one of Ethereum’s developers to help create a scam filtering solution. Jack’s response was simply “We are on it.”
Many experts have acknowledged that the scam bots have gotten out of hand, John McAfee after his hack admitted through a Tweet that;
“The scammers are becoming problematic. Twitter has been no help. When I go into protected tweet mode my Twitter app crashes because it cannot handle the volume of follow requests. Do not fall for ANY giveaways. I do not give away anything.”
Cornell professor, Emin Gun Sirer, has also been vocal saying that Twitter has failed in protecting the public. In March she criticized Jack and his team, saying;
“These scams are getting out of hand. Jack, Twitter, if you can’t detect this kind of brazen scam, what hope do you have of improving your platform?”
The question remains, has Jack Dorsey proved that his platform can protect its users? With cryptocurrencies being unregulated, new, and full of investors without full technical experience, these exposures are especially damning for the industry. Will this cause Twitter to lose its foothold as a mouthpiece for crypto?
