Fake Ether Token Giveaways are Clogging Twitter

Investor expert from Blocktower hedge fund game, Ari Paul, was on another multiple tweet philosophical lecture titled: a meditation on over the counter and regular exchanges’ impacts on price. It was apparently very interesting. No personage less than Laura Shin, Forbes journalist, popular podcast host and ecosystem boldly attempted a read.  She came up against what most Twitter users have been facing: kind of elaborate ether (ETH) come-ons, fake giveaways mirrored accounts.

It’s like you could hear Ms. Shin’s trademark Valley Girl argot echoing through her corresponding response tweets of disgust and alarm: “Ari wrote an interesting thread, but FYI, @twitter and @jack, my experience reading it was marred by all the spam accounts touting free ETH that made it harder for me to find the real discussion.”

Not long after, she actually came across another appalling truth: she’d been personally compromised. Someone with the account @XaedenJ had been using Ms. Shin’s professional reputation and likeness to silently approve a 10,000 Ethereum giveaway, and all readers are being directed to a website asking for payment. The scam did not just stop there, but also created a thread conversation about the giveaway, by dialoguing with itself. “If you’re late for this event,” the fake Laura Shin posted below the landing page advert in the thread, “you’ll get your investment back at once!”

She later found after some more digging that the scam post had had 28 likes already. These were most probably coming from bots designed for that purpose. These were quite appealing to cryptocurrency noobs, which is where the problem lies. The real Ms. Shin tweeted, “Someone please create a better Twitter. This is ridiculous.” The fake address, @XaeenJ, was cleared out by Twitter, permanently, and way too late.

Via Ms. Shin’s platform, her access to movers and shakers within the industry, Twitter was able to recognize the problem and take quick action, even though, too late.