
Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter - teslacar
https://medium.com/@robertyusert/there-are-free-ethreum-spam-botnets-ravaging-twitter-68b25d12c2a
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CosmicSteve
Agreed, it's getting absurd. Practically every post from an official
cryptocurrency team's Twitter account gets numerous replies from an account
designed to look just like the official account.

Typically, they post a poster stating that there is an Ethereum giveaway, and
to enter: one simply needs to give a small amount of Ethereum to the wallet
address in the poster. This is supposedly to have the wallet address made
known to the "staff" and in turn: the user will receive several times more
Ethereum back.

It's clearly still roping in people and is highly prevelant. I'm shocked that
Twitter's staff hasn't taken much evasive action. These spam/scam accounts
keep springing up left, and right with no end in sight.

~~~
malikNF
What's even more absurd is how much funds in ETH are there in these accounts.

For instance I saw one scam post advertise this address a day or two ago,
[https://etherscan.io/address/0x7DB9656FC8435F765DF5748E32Bf3...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x7DB9656FC8435F765DF5748E32Bf329098FfB5fb)

~15k USD worth funds scammed out of people. Not entirely sure if I find this
funny or depressing.

~~~
detritus
I'm ashamed to admit the first one of these I saw ('Musk' celebrating a launch
last year) I was totally credulous of and forwarded it on to a couple of ETH-
owning friends who quickly put me in my place (..and subsequently disavowed
friendship :)..). I spent the next 24 hours on ETH-tracking sites watching as
these bastards raked in nearly $80,000, from that one scam alone.

In my defence, I don't use Twitter much, and I mistook the value of ETH 'Musk'
was asking for at around $20 rather than $200+ - had it been my own money, I
would've been far more eagle-eyed and cautious.

Still, I was amazed/horrified at the gall and success of these people.

I never cease to be surprised at how unremorsefully sociopathic some people
can be when it comes to getting their hands on other people's money.

~~~
moneytide1
Sure they may get away with it.

But the curse is that even if no one catches them: They'll always know that
they did it.

Karma will take its toll.

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abecedarius
When I see one of these I often report it (just one more finger in the dike)
-- but Twitter's report options only include "spam" and "abusive/harmful"; I'm
not sure what's the closest option for fraud and impersonation.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Unfortunately the twitter report options are a tree, so it's hard to find the
right thing. I believe under abuse there's an "impersonation" option, I've
used it before.

~~~
abecedarius
Oh thanks, I’ll look for that next time. Of course there’ll be a next time.

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ghop02
You know there's a problem when any prominent crypto figure has to put "not
giving away free Eth" in their twitter name to help combat the spam.

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menzoic
This even happens with verified accounts. Fun fact: we got banned after
reporting with no human support to help us. We suspect the spammers targeted
our account with multiple false reports [https://hackernoon.com/apc-nigerias-
verified-twitter-account...](https://hackernoon.com/apc-nigerias-verified-
twitter-account-is-scamming-people-with-cryptocurrency-2a7cdb804c0a)

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slimshady94
The simplest solution would be to hire 2 interns familiar with crypto twitter
to sit down and manually ban the fake replies full-time for a couple of
months. Would that really be so costly/difficult?

~~~
r00fus
Is it in Twitter's (financial) interest that to remove the spam or keep it
going? I'm honestly asking.

~~~
andai
More bots more growth!

~~~
astrodust
People flaming, complaining, arguing with shills about scams just look like
sweet, sweet engagement to algorithms!

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raverbashing
A fool and their money are easily parted

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supernes
Every post by a prominent figure such as Elon Musk, Pavel Durov and many
others are immediately spammed to hell by copycat accounts pushing these
scams. I've spent a good amount of time reporting them to no avail. Twitter
just doesn't care.

~~~
dullgiulio
Even worse, I have seen a user get the verification as "John Doe", then he
could change his name to Elon Musk, keeping the verification badge.

Twitter has a long way to go.

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civilian
Sorry, it's not clear to me, what exactly is the con that these bots are
running?

~~~
verroq
You can find an example here

[https://twitter.com/BitMEXdotcom/status/997099326714335234](https://twitter.com/BitMEXdotcom/status/997099326714335234)

The first post is from an official exchange. The rest isn’t. Take careful note
of the usernames and like counts

~~~
sp332
What's worse is when a "verified" user gets their account pwned. The
fraudsters set their display name to match another verified account and copy
their avatar. It's hard to spot in the crowd of a twitter feed.
[https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/99294298727663616...](https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/992942987276636160)
Well, it would be if the messages themselves weren't so dumb.

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chx
Larger points notwithstanding, verification is not suspended, for eg
[https://twitter.com/emma4change](https://twitter.com/emma4change) joined
after Aug 2017 and is verified.

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fwdpropaganda
Explain to me as someone not into cryptocurrencies, why ethereum specifically?

~~~
zerostar07
bitcoin's too expensive to ask for money like this. Also old timers won't fall
for this scam. the next most popular is ethereum.

~~~
verroq
Also the ethereum ICO get-rich-quick “investors” are easy marks.

~~~
robotrout
It's not just Ethereum. I have seen this scam aimed at DGB and MAID folks as
well, and those are just two that I pay attention to, so there are doubtless
many more.

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donttrack
Wouldn’t this be super easy to filter out with some kind of ML scheme?

