6 ms·

Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

76 points by teslacar 8y ago

civilian 8y ago
Sorry, it's not clear to me, what exactly is the con that these bots are running?
- verroq 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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/992942987276636160 https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/99294298727663616... Well, it would be if the messages themselves weren't so dumb.
- rc_hadoken 8y ago
  - Famous twitter personality A posts something. - (Usually) the first reply to their tweet is a bot with the exact same avatar BUT a slightly misspelled name of personality A offering 1000 ethereum in exchange for .10 ETH or what have you. - There are people gullible enough to send them ETH/any other crypto - Profit
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    Back when they were super prevalent on Elon Musk's tweets, I'd look up the wallets and sure enough people were dumb enough to send it coins. What gets me is the stupidly obvious fake replies saying it works. Honestly the best solution is to open verification to everyone, not just notable people, anyone that actually wants to hand over their ID and prove they are who they say they are and let us filter out non verified users. If they don't want verification to look like an endorsement, that's what they need to do. Otherwise it is an endorsement.
    - kawfey 8y ago
      I have a (dumb) friend who fell for this. It was a good scam - the eth scambot used the same profile photo and had a very similar @ username to elon's (minus the "Verified" icon of course), and it looked like "real" people were replying with affirmations.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
CosmicSteve 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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/0x7DB9656FC8435F765DF5748E32Bf329098FfB5fb https://etherscan.io/address/0x7DB9656FC8435F765DF5748E32Bf3... ~15k USD worth funds scammed out of people. Not entirely sure if I find this funny or depressing.
  - siruncledrew 8y ago
    Some of these scammers are using other wallets they own to send money to themselves to make it appear more "legit" to unsuspecting people. It's pretty terrible that as soon as a scam wallet is identified, another one just pops right up. This is why Vitalik changed his name to "Vitaliak "Not Giving Away ETH" Buterin".
  - detritus 8y ago
    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.
ghop02 8y ago
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.
raverbashing 8y ago
A fool and their money are easily parted
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  The real problem is these accounts that are actually giving away free Etherium. When one account actually delivers it enables the whole ecosystem of fraud to perpetuate. Please message https://twitter.com/FreeForYou https://twitter.com/FreeForYou - and tell them to STOP giving away all these free monies!!!
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Account protected, opened in 2008, one tweet?
    - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
      It was just a dumb joke. I didn't want to link to a real scam account in case anyone actually clicked it.
fwdpropaganda 8y ago
Explain to me as someone not into cryptocurrencies, why ethereum specifically?
- zerostar07 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    Also the ethereum ICO get-rich-quick “investors” are easy marks.
    - robotrout 8y ago
      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.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  I'm not sure, but I suspect it's because it has the most liquidity (trading pairs, trading volume) after bitcoin, and much lower transaction fees. Another factor could be that lot of people already have Ethereum accounts, and ETH, given it is the most widely used cryptocurrency by daily transaction count. Many people have an Ethereum wallet just to be able to buy and hold ERC20 tokens.
supernes 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
menzoic 8y ago
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-is-scamming-people-with-cryptocurrency-2a7cdb804c0a https://hackernoon.com/apc-nigerias-verified-twitter-account...
chx 8y ago
Larger points notwithstanding, verification is not suspended, for eg https://twitter.com/emma4change https://twitter.com/emma4change joined after Aug 2017 and is verified.
slimshady94 8y ago
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?
- rtkwe 8y ago
  It would be if that was Twitter's response to every spam bot problem on the whole of Twitter yes.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Is it in Twitter's (financial) interest that to remove the spam or keep it going? I'm honestly asking.
  - andai 8y ago
    More bots more growth!
    - astrodust 8y ago
      People flaming, complaining, arguing with shills about scams just look like sweet, sweet engagement to algorithms!
abecedarius 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    Oh thanks, I’ll look for that next time. Of course there’ll be a next time.
blklivesmatter 8y ago
Ban zack !!
donttrack 8y ago
Wouldn’t this be super easy to filter out with some kind of ML scheme?

76 points by teslacar 8y ago

civilian 8y ago

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

verroq 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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/992942987276636160 https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/99294298727663616... Well, it would be if the messages themselves weren't so dumb.
rc_hadoken 8y ago
- Famous twitter personality A posts something. - (Usually) the first reply to their tweet is a bot with the exact same avatar BUT a slightly misspelled name of personality A offering 1000 ethereum in exchange for .10 ETH or what have you. - There are people gullible enough to send them ETH/any other crypto - Profit
- dawnerd 8y ago
  Back when they were super prevalent on Elon Musk's tweets, I'd look up the wallets and sure enough people were dumb enough to send it coins. What gets me is the stupidly obvious fake replies saying it works. Honestly the best solution is to open verification to everyone, not just notable people, anyone that actually wants to hand over their ID and prove they are who they say they are and let us filter out non verified users. If they don't want verification to look like an endorsement, that's what they need to do. Otherwise it is an endorsement.
  - kawfey 8y ago
    I have a (dumb) friend who fell for this. It was a good scam - the eth scambot used the same profile photo and had a very similar @ username to elon's (minus the "Verified" icon of course), and it looked like "real" people were replying with affirmations.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

CosmicSteve 8y ago

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 8y ago
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/0x7DB9656FC8435F765DF5748E32Bf329098FfB5fb https://etherscan.io/address/0x7DB9656FC8435F765DF5748E32Bf3... ~15k USD worth funds scammed out of people. Not entirely sure if I find this funny or depressing.
- siruncledrew 8y ago
  Some of these scammers are using other wallets they own to send money to themselves to make it appear more "legit" to unsuspecting people. It's pretty terrible that as soon as a scam wallet is identified, another one just pops right up. This is why Vitalik changed his name to "Vitaliak "Not Giving Away ETH" Buterin".
- detritus 8y ago
  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.

ghop02 8y ago

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.

raverbashing 8y ago

A fool and their money are easily parted

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
The real problem is these accounts that are actually giving away free Etherium. When one account actually delivers it enables the whole ecosystem of fraud to perpetuate. Please message https://twitter.com/FreeForYou https://twitter.com/FreeForYou - and tell them to STOP giving away all these free monies!!!
- pjc50 8y ago
  Account protected, opened in 2008, one tweet?
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    It was just a dumb joke. I didn't want to link to a real scam account in case anyone actually clicked it.

fwdpropaganda 8y ago

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

zerostar07 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Also the ethereum ICO get-rich-quick “investors” are easy marks.
  - robotrout 8y ago
    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.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
I'm not sure, but I suspect it's because it has the most liquidity (trading pairs, trading volume) after bitcoin, and much lower transaction fees. Another factor could be that lot of people already have Ethereum accounts, and ETH, given it is the most widely used cryptocurrency by daily transaction count. Many people have an Ethereum wallet just to be able to buy and hold ERC20 tokens.

supernes 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

menzoic 8y ago

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-is-scamming-people-with-cryptocurrency-2a7cdb804c0a https://hackernoon.com/apc-nigerias-verified-twitter-account...

chx 8y ago

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

slimshady94 8y ago

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?

rtkwe 8y ago
It would be if that was Twitter's response to every spam bot problem on the whole of Twitter yes.
r00fus 8y ago
Is it in Twitter's (financial) interest that to remove the spam or keep it going? I'm honestly asking.
- andai 8y ago
  More bots more growth!
  - astrodust 8y ago
    People flaming, complaining, arguing with shills about scams just look like sweet, sweet engagement to algorithms!

abecedarius 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Oh thanks, I’ll look for that next time. Of course there’ll be a next time.

blklivesmatter 8y ago

Ban zack !!

donttrack 8y ago

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