Early this morning, billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, reached out over Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer for assist in fighting cryptocurrency scammers on Twitter. As previously reported by Unhashed, there is a growing trend lately of fraudsters impersonating celebrities using fake accounts, duping victims into sending cryptocurrency to private wallets. Palmer tweeted that he or she sent a script to Musk which can be promised to answer the problem.
Scammer Hijack Celebrity Identities on Twitter
Celebrity-impersonating scambots were thrust within the forefront of public attention back in July following a identities of public personalities like Elon Musk, Vitalik Buterin and actor William Shatner were hijacked by fraudsters. The scambots use fake Twitter accounts to enhance various income generating schemes, often involving Ethereum.
– Elon Musk July 8, 2019
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin called out for Twitter founder Jack Dorsey that will help fight against the scammers.
– Vitalik “Not releasing ETH” Buterin July 9, 2019
Earlier that week actor William Shatner has also been targeted.
– William Shatner July 2, 2019
Dogecoin Creator Provides Scam-Fighting Script to Elon Musk
As scambots on Twitter pursue to plague the woking platform, Musk reached to Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer for help.
“@ummjackson privided you can help eliminate the annoying scam spammers, that could be much appreciated.”
-Elon Musk @elonmusk September 17, 2019
Palmer quickly available to help by giving a script that will protect Musk from scammers posting replies on his Twitter feed.
“When you DM me , I’ll provide you with the script – it’s short, simple and easy you just run it with cron somewhere.”
-Jackson Palmer @ummjackson September 17, 2019
Soon after, Palmer reported of the fact that script appeared to be delivered and implemented by Musk. A large amount of already have, Palmer repeatedly brought the situation of scambots to Jack Dorsey’s attention.
“Update: Elon contains the script… we had a very good chat concerning how @jack and the Twitter team will want to automate and fasten this problem to their end though.”
-Jackson Palmer @ummjackson September 17, 2019
At a Congressional hearing earlier this month focusing on Twitter’s transparency and accountability, Dorsey proposed that blockchain may be the solution to fighting misinformation and scams at the platform.
“Blockchain is the one that I think provides extensive untapped potential, specifically around distributed trust and distributed enforcement potentially [-] We haven’t gone as ep as we’d like as of this time in understanding the way in which might apply fractional laser treatments to the problems we’re facing at Twitter, but carry out have people in the catering company thinking about it today.”
Research published in August by Duo Security stated that there is a network of over 15,000 scambots currently on Twitter.