Things have changed on the big blue bird app. Elon tributes may no longer be the hottest way to make some quick cash. Instead, we’re seeing verified profiles on Twitter compromised to promote and sell NFTs. Snoop Dogg has also now joined the bandwagon with Elon Musk to criticize Twitter for its policies.
It is high time to understand this problem if you’re in any way contributing to the crypto community (or planning to!).
So, what happened?
Recently, the Twitter account Cozomo de’ Medici, operated by Snoop Dogg spread the word on “influencers” scamming off people of their hard-earned money. How? You ask.
Scam accounts impersonate real accounts and ask followers to send them crypto coins. Then, these scammers promise those who send digital currency that they will receive four or five times the amount of money they put in as a reward.
But, the real problem occurred when these scam accounts began scamming with a blue ticked verification badge attached to it (which was used to delineate imposters).
This was the problem posed by the account Cozomo de’ Medici (Snoop Dogg), who isn’t the only one to raise a voice against it. Elon Musk and Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin have had the unfortunate chances to prove their identity and call this scamming issue out.
Another issue raised by Snoop Dogg’s alleged account is even though the twitter space is inclusive of NFTs, the bigger accounts with larger engagements are not allowed to be verified. The tweet thread also points out other recognizable larger audience catering accounts like punk6529 and Keyboard Monkey.
Snoop also talks about the alleged “million makers” who are blue tick verified, mind you, but steal your money, NFT projects, or make you join fake whitelists.
Blue tick verified accounts are considered legit, it’s much more likely to be trusted than other scams, making people more susceptible to falling for donation ploys.
Not only do these accounts verify for the original, but they also perfectly copy the pinned tweet, profile picture, and successive tweets.
Hijacking of the original account was common enough, adding to the trouble, they have begun to hijack any random account and use it to spoof the celebrity’s account.
In new investment assets like cryptocurrencies, scammers take advantage of the influx of new users with misinformation. This calls for due diligence and careful scrutiny on such giveaways and donation tweets.
Recently, the Twitter Blue feature enabled iOS users to set your change your profile picture into a hexagonal NFT. Elon Musk also criticized Twitter for spending engineering resources on that and not spotting out spammers and scammers.
