ETH Bots Run Rampant While Twitter Claims to Ban Lookalike Accounts

According to reports the social media platform Twitter has been deleting millions of fraudulent accounts per day, and stated during the first week of July that it suspended more than 70 million accounts throughout May and June. However, the cryptocurrency industry is still plagued by tons of ‘ETH scam-bots’ pretending to be bitcoin luminaries and this scheme has made these particular fraudsters millions.

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Twitter Says The Company Has Suspended 70 Million Phony Accounts, But Bots Still Plague the Twitter-Sphere

Over the last few weeks, news.Bitcoin.com had written about the various Twitter scams and fake Ethereum giveaways that can be found throughout lots of conversations within the cryptocurrency industry. Some developers have even been working on cryptographic solutions that can weed out the vast amount of lookalike Twitter scammers. The massive amount of phony accounts use a person’s profile picture, the same username, and these frauds typically jump into a conversation following a hot tweet and push their ETH giveaways.

Phony John McAfee and Tone Vays Twitter accounts. Screenshots were taken on July 15, 2018.

An example giveaway is you give them 5 ETH, and they say they will give you 50 ETH in return after the funds are sent. This particular trick, even though it’s pretty obvious to some people, has been able to help these imposters acquire millions of dollars worth of Ethereum. Then just last week Twitter detailed to the media that they have thrown the ban-hammer down on fake accounts and have been suspending millions a day. 

According to the Washington Post, the social media giant suspended 70 million accounts throughout May and June. Even though in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, these bots or spammers are in full force impersonating cryptocurrency figures, executives, and even digital asset exchanges like Binance. Yet the bot problem has also plagued movie stars, musicians, and political parties as well. A researcher from a Palo Alto-based think tank, Samuel C. Woolley, believes Twitter should be doing more to prevent spammers and bots.      

“When you have an account tweeting over a thousand times a day, there’s no question that it’s a bot,” said Woolley, at the Digital Intelligence Lab at the Institute for the Future.

Twitter has to be doing more to prevent the amplification and suppression of political ideas.

A fake Binance exchange Twitter account. Screenshot was taken on July 15, 2018.

Crypto-Luminaries, Bigwigs, and Exchanges Are Not Giving Away 200 ETH

Even though Twitter claims they have been banning millions of fake accounts the problem is still happening within the cryptocurrency industry. Lots of ‘cryptocurrency bigwigs’ are being copied by look-alike accounts still to this day. For instance, on July 15 the writer and speaker Andreas Antonopoulos shared a tweet of one of his latest talks. After the tweet, a phony “CZ” pretending to be the CEO of Binance states: 

A nеw prоmоtion with suppоrt is available tоday Get 200 ETHEREUM in your wallet now. You саn use аnу wal­let or exch­ange (Fоr example: Coinb­ase, Bina­nce, and others) or use a smart con­tract. If you’re Ia­te for this eve­nt, you’ll get your investment bасk imme­diately!

Unfortunately, the ETH scam bots are alive and well on Twitter and are still able to spawn new accounts after the company claims to have thrown down the ban hammer. For now, these cryptocurrency scammers don’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

What do you think about this situation? Do you think Twitter is doing a good job of taking care of this issue? Let us know what you think in the comment section below. 

Images via Shutterstock, Pixabay, Twitter.

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