The scams promoted on the Twitter platform

A researcher conducted an analysis of the scams promoted on Twitter through so-called scambots. His analysis reveals some conclusions already known, but also some new elements.

First of all, nobody gives free money. Ads like “Send 0.5ETH and receive 50 ETH back” are always false. Scambots promote each other, leaving the impression that there were users who received the respect funds.

Unfortunately, inexperienced users are still cheated. For example, a recent twitter campaign promoting the site crypto-drop.org managed to accumulate 0.164BTC from the naive.

Famous companies and names in the industry

In many cases, the names of some popular companies are used on the crypto scene – Coinbase being the most popular. In most cases, users are sent to cloned sites such as www.coinbasepromo.net, www.coinbase-promo.com or www.coinbase.promo.

The fake tweets of Binance and Vitalik Buterin seem to be a second favorite of the scammers.

In order to gain visibility, these “promotions” are transmitted in most cases in response to official announcements of the exchanges or well-known personalities.

The analysis identified 52 different sites used to promote these scams from only 330 reference messages.

A noteworthy feature is that, in many cases, instead of text that could be automatically filtered by Twitter, scambots now uses screenshot images. These appear to come from the official social media accounts of the respective companies or personalities, in which a misleading message and site is inserted.

Unfortunately, the social network has not yet implemented a system for deleting this type of message. In most cases, the scambots phenomenon occurs when the price of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, increases.

The only way to combat it now is to report messages or users.