{"id":330914,"date":"2018-05-04T09:14:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T09:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniquehot.com\/?p=330914"},"modified":"2019-03-28T15:18:45","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T15:18:45","slug":"twitter-bots-cryptocurrency-impersonation-scam-nets-1500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uniquehot.com\/news\/ai-and-tech\/twitter-bots-cryptocurrency-impersonation-scam-nets-1500\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Bots Cryptocurrency Impersonation Scam Nets $1,500"},"content":{"rendered":"
Twitter bots impersonated dozens of prominent cryptocurrency traders in a phishing\u00a0scam for three days before a\u00a0reporter at BuzzFeed called the companies attention to it.<\/p>\n
Followers of digital investor Kevin Pham received a link in his tweets on Tuesday inviting them to win Bitcoin Ethereum and Litecoin.<\/p>\n
The tweet read;<\/p>\n
“Did you hear about Bitfinex Giveaway? To celebrate partnership between Biftinex and EOSfinex, they give away a total amount of 1.000 BTC, 15.000 ETH and 10.000 LTC. Hurry up before it ends!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The problem was Kevin didn’t\u00a0send that tweet and there was no such contest. Pham and dozens of other well-known crypto\u00a0related tweeters had their\u00a0identities attached to fake accounts which tweeted out the contest details for three days.<\/p>\n
This was just the latest cryptocurrency related scam to be perpetrated on Twitter by bots using clone accounts to trick people into sending currency to wallets belonging to the end scammers. Twitter is not the only platform under fire for bitcoin scams – Facebook has been criticised in Germany for\u00a0showing Bitcoin Revolution related ads<\/a>\u00a0which promise traders significant\u00a0financial returns. In this set up\u00a0fake tweets sent real followers to a website that was made to look like the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex where would be contestants were asked to pick their preferred currency and given a wallet address to pay into.<\/p>\n
To lend the scheme credibility the scammers even forged cryptocurrency transactions and created a loop back to their\u00a0Bitfinex<\/a> site if anyone tried to click away from the contest.<\/p>\n
The scam was brought to light when a reporter at BuzzFeed<\/a> found their account had been spoofed as well and ran the story on the site.<\/p>\n
Scam Nets A Haul of $1,500<\/h2>\n