Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#11

Post by sp332 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

verroq wrote: post #4

civilian wrote: post #2

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

You can find an example here 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

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... Well, it would be if the messages themselves weren't so dumb.

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#12

Post by fwdpropaganda » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

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

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#13

Post by pjc50 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #10

raverbashing wrote: post #9

A fool and their money are easily parted

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 - and tell them to STOP giving away all these free monies!!!

Account protected, opened in 2008, one tweet?

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#14

Post by malikNF » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

CosmicSteve wrote: post #6

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 mad…

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...

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

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#15

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

CosmicSteve wrote: post #6

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 mad…

[deleted]

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#16

Post by zerostar07 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #12

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

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.

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#17

Post by kawfey » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #8

rc_hadoken wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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

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 verifie…

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.

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#18

Post by supernes » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

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.

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#19

Post by verroq » Thu, May 17, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #16

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #12

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

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.

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

Re: Free Ethereum spam bots are ravaging Twitter

#20

Post by ironjunkie » Thu, May 17, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

CosmicSteve wrote: post #6

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 mad…

It is actually quite sophisticated, the wallets I looked at even simulated the transactions that are sent back with 10* the original amount (to other wallets owned by the scammers).