[2018-11-06] Posing as Elon Musk, hacker nets about $180,000 worth of bitcoin

[mocker001]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/posing-as-elon-musk-nets-hacker-about-180000-worth-of-bitcoin-so-far-2018-11-06

Several verified accounts were used by these jerks, to pose as Elon Musk. Some accounts belonged to politicians as well. Of course people shouldn’t be falling for this, but, they can be cut some slack as these were verified accounts.

Obviously the tweets are comical and dumb, but still, they did get almost $200K, didn’t they. Let’s see how twitter reacts, while hoping they don’t bottle it like the last time.

[ZombieSlayerTank]

That's insane that they used bitcoin as a means of getting currency.  I guess that makes sense, as it is more enticing nowadays to people who see "cash giveaways" as more of a scam.

[hatshepsut93]

I understand how people can get scammed by ICO's, HYIP's and cloud mining, because they are thinking that they are investing in some sort of business, but how can so many people seriously believe that some celebrity is giving away cryptocurrency and needs them to send their coins in order to participate?

[gentlemand]

Er, fuck 'em.

I have less than zero sympathy for anyone that goddamn dim. If they weren't going to give their money away doing this, it was going to be via other avenues. I hope the con artist uses it more wisely.

[cybersofts]

I don't know why some people are stupid enough to fall victims of such crypto scams. the majority of bitcoin giveaways are scams. by the way, why would anyone you his bitcoin for free? If you are not wise enough to hold your bitcoin carefully then you'll fall a victim of such scams. People should ask themselves before sending their bitcoin to anyone, why would that person give you his bitcoin for free? is he Mr. Nakamoto or what? 

[yndye]

I don't know why some people are stupid enough to fall victims of such crypto scams. the majority of bitcoin giveaways are scams. by the way, why would anyone you his bitcoin for free? If you are not wise enough to hold your bitcoin carefully then you'll fall a victim of such scams. People should ask themselves before sending their bitcoin to anyone, why would that person give you his bitcoin for free? is he Mr. Nakamoto or what? 

Well, he is a famous and rich person and we know that there are times when they choose to give something for promotional purposes or they just want to give something to people and for those who are new to crypto world seeing the price currently, they would be convinced that they can get something out of it. When I am just new to cryptocurrency, I easily believe this kind of giveaway that's why I got scammed before.

Of course, I regret that I easily believe it but then I learned my lesson and  try to help others who are just blindly believing this kind of stuff by warning them.

[Kemarit]

Yeah, its really comical and I have a good laughs reading the tweet. But oh my, people are still falling for this trap and the scammers was able to raised $180,000 worth of bitcoins, hats off to him. LOL. Its really hard to fathom why people are gullible enough to believed that if its really someone famous, we should take him/her word for it. Really hard to understand because its pretty obvious from the beginning, I guess what we can do is just treat this as another lessons learned to everyone.

[Harlot]

There is no doubt that people would really fall for this scam, Elon Musk is a known figure in the cryptocurrency industry and posing some believable photos and sites would definitely convince a lot of people that this shit is real. Every time I see this kinds of "to good to be true" schemes I know that something is up and the best thing is to step away, that is why I have avoided dozens of investment schemes because I know I'll end up easily losing the money I invested it for hoping to have an easy return for it.

[Slow death]

[...]

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1059508666632716289/photo/1



How can people believe in this kind of scheme? if someone did that kind of scheme then that person would be running a ponzi scheme, and I doubt any celebrity or anyone famous would do such a thing. Then I ask the same question again: why the hell do people fall into scams like these? The only answer that comes in my head is: greed

[Lucius]

How can people believe in this kind of scheme? if someone did that kind of scheme then that person would be running a ponzi scheme, and I doubt any celebrity or anyone famous would do such a thing. Then I ask the same question again: why the hell do people fall into scams like these? The only answer that comes in my head is: greed

It's not just about greed, but about ignorance combined with poor English knowledge with the addition of something very important - some people blindly following some celebrities on social networks and they will do whatever what is required. Ponzi is an unknown term for them, therefore they can not even defend themselves from any kind of fraud.

These types of fraud are very easily feasible, you only need FB/Twitter account with name as much as possible similar to the original and coin address - then you just throw the bait in digital sea and catch digital fish. As long as there are possibilities, there will be the fraudsters who will exploit them.

[LeGaulois]

People can be really dumb sometimes and no logic. Sending money to someone who doesn't care about you. Don't people have better things to do with their income, no bills?
Twitter won't publish any comment regarding this scam, the company will just try to avoid responding to the bad buzz. Or just a generic reply

[DooMAD]

I've heard people say that social media rots your brain, but this is something else.  People don't want to believe what scientists and doctors say, but they'll take twitter at face value without stopping to even question it?  No wonder the world is in the state it currently is. 

[hatshepsut93]

People can be really dumb sometimes and no logic. Sending money to someone who doesn't care about you. Don't people have better things to do with their income, no bills?
Twitter won't publish any comment regarding this scam, the company will just try to avoid responding to the bad buzz. Or just a generic reply

They have actually commented about this scam: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46097853

They have said that they are working on it, and that they have already been able to reduce the number of impressions these scam tweets get. Time will tell if they will be able to solve this problem or not.

[CoinAcademyNL]

Maybe those politicians should be more aware of cyber-security.

Sad to see that this has happened and that people fell for this, but on the other hand it should be so easy to know that this is fake...

[Thekool1s]

If you ask me, Twitter should be held accountable for this. I mean if it's really that easy to manipulate a blue-ticked account than its about time they think about their security. Once I saw a similar thing happening on Facebook, I reported that account and I haven't seen something like this again on facebook at least. I believe Facebook manually reviews a name change request of the account and you have to re-verify your Identity afterwards. It's about time these platforms should be held accountable too. They get away too often if you ask me. Yeah you can argue people are dumb, greedy whatever. But if you tell me that I can change a blue-tick account to impersonate a celebrity and get away with it than I think people should really think about what kind of pathetic platform they are on.

[xFiber]

How can people believe in this kind of scheme? if someone did that kind of scheme then that person would be running a ponzi scheme, and I doubt any celebrity or anyone famous would do such a thing. Then I ask the same question again: why the hell do people fall into scams like these? The only answer that comes in my head is: greed

I really don't think it's only greed, sure it can be a big factor especially when it comes to crypto scams, but I feel like there are more factors to this matter such as inexperience or gullibility. I often times cringe when my (grand)parents ask me whether an obvious scam site is real or not, or contract a virus to their pc that could've been avoided quite easily. These are all honest intellectual people who are simply inexperienced with all these threats out there.

If you ask me, Twitter should be held accountable for this. I mean if it's really that easy to manipulate a blue-ticked account than its about time they think about their security. Once I saw a similar thing happening on Facebook, I reported that account and I haven't seen something like this again on facebook at least. I believe Facebook manually reviews a name change request of the account and you have to re-verify your Identity afterwards. It's about time these platforms should be held accountable too. They get away too often if you ask me. Yeah you can argue people are dumb, greedy whatever. But if you tell me that I can change a blue-tick account to impersonate a celebrity and get away with it than I think people should really think about what kind of pathetic platform they are on.

Exactly this! Especially those who are responsible for auditing the advertisements launched on their platform (if audits are even taking place in the first place!). A platform's number one concern should be their users and if they're exposing their users to such a blatant scam then I feel like you're equally (if not more) responsible for the way this scam has turned out.

[Thekool1s]

Especially those who are responsible for auditing the advertisements launched on their platform (if audits are even taking place in the first place!).

Facebook does it with AI, They have this no more than 20% text rule. But this doesn't immediately filter out any sort of hate/scam content. There are special keyword filtering as far as I know. If your description or the title match those keywords then the ad is manually reviewed by their team. If it comes clean the ad is automatically processed. Also with Twitter, they aren't exploiting the ads but rather their feature.

A platform's number one concern should be their users and if they're exposing their users to such a blatant scam then I feel like you're equally (if not more) responsible for the way this scam has turned out.

Exactly but No one wants to take the blame. Just look at how Facebook and Google handled the ICO ads. Instead of doing their job which would have been to validate the businesses they are working with, they just banned them altogether. But what I find hypocritical here is that They allow these fake gurus to sell these fake courses and make millions yet they haven't banned selling of courses on their platforms. I dunno why these platforms are so selective and anti-cryptos.

[guybrushthreepwood]

[...]

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1059508666632716289/photo/1

Lol. That is hillarious. Sounds legit.

How can people believe in this kind of scheme? if someone did that kind of scheme then that person would be running a ponzi scheme, and I doubt any celebrity or anyone famous would do such a thing. Then I ask the same question again: why the hell do people fall into scams like these? The only answer that comes in my head is: greed

Greed and stupidity. As the phrase goes - a fool and his money are easily parted. There's also another one - if something sounds to good to be true then it probably is. It's often usually easier to scam the greedy as they get excited over the prospect of free money and critical thinking goes out of the window along with their money. I really don't have any sympathy for these people as this is blatantly a scam and I only hope they learned their lesson from this.

If you ask me, Twitter should be held accountable for this. I mean if it's really that easy to manipulate a blue-ticked account than its about time they think about their security. Once I saw a similar thing happening on Facebook, I reported that account and I haven't seen something like this again on facebook at least. I believe Facebook manually reviews a name change request of the account and you have to re-verify your Identity afterwards. It's about time these platforms should be held accountable too. They get away too often if you ask me. Yeah you can argue people are dumb, greedy whatever. But if you tell me that I can change a blue-tick account to impersonate a celebrity and get away with it than I think people should really think about what kind of pathetic platform they are on.

The only people who should be held accountable are the fools who lost their money. Just because someone is a celebrity or 'verified' doesn't mean you should give them your money, especially online. These are the types of people who would fall for Nigerian lottery scams because the email came from 'prince'. I don't think gmal or hotmail should be responsible for those who fall victim to those scams either.

[Thekool1s]

The only people who should be held accountable are the fools who lost their money. Just because someone is a celebrity or 'verified' doesn't mean you should give them your money, especially online.

I mean anyone who isn't tech savvy doesn't mean they are a fool. These platforms often give bad press to the cryptos saying things, like they are scam/shady and users should stay away from them. Just look at how Facebook and Google banned crypto related ads. But when these Platforms are used to sell fake courses, we don't see an action from them banning all these fake gurus. It's their hypocrisy which I can't stand. I do agree with you on people being fool but not everyone is a tech savvy person. There should be measures which protect the users on their platform.

Nigerian lottery scams because the email came from 'prince'.

You can't compare the two. One is a shady email address, while other is a special badge from a supposedly trusted platform.

[gentlemand]

You can't compare the two. One is a shady email address, while other is a special badge from a supposedly trusted platform.

People need to exercise a teensy weensy bit of common sense. Even if it's a 'special badge' it's still so obviously a scam that I can't summon up any sympathy at all.

If Elon Musk's specially badged account told you to inject your phallus with bleach to extend your life by 20 years would you do it without question? I would not.