SpaceX Crypto Scams Featuring Elon Musk’s Face Still Common On Twitter

I started to see a big increase within the variety of scammers who were attempting to use photos of Elon Musk to try to sell cryptocurrency. In January, February and even March I had written about this problem. Yet Twitter continues to be awash with scams. So let’s take a take a look at the one I saw yesterday.

The crypto ad was purchased by a so-called “verified” user on Twitter by an account called Mr. Chips. Twitter has stopped verifying the identity of its users. Musk decided to charge $8 per 30 days for the blue check mark, which implies anyone with a number of dollars should purchase “verification.”

The Twitter user’s bio features a jumble of words without spaces, which can indicate it was created in an automatic fashion: “Son,husband,father,grandfather – I learn something latest every day!”

The Twitter ad encompasses a photo of Musk along with his arms folded and the words “SpaceX Token Presale is Live.” Clicking on the ad brings the user to a landing page that’s made to appear to be a news outlet or blog. The domain itself is hosted on telegra.ph to provide it the looks of a news website equivalent to The Telegraph in Britain. The.ph domain belongs to the Philippines.

The text of the landing page claims Elon Musk has announced the launch of a brand new cryptocurrency token related to SpaceX, something that simply isn’t true.

“Breaking news for all crypto investors world wide! The visionary CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, has just announced the launch of the official SpaceX Token, and the Pre-Sale is now open for a limited time only,” the web site reads.

The web site explains that individuals can buy the crypto for “$1.70 per token,” which it suggests is a few type of deal.

“‍Investing within the SpaceX Token not only offers the prospect to shape the longer term of space exploration and blockchain technology, but additionally the chance to win incredible prizes, including a probability to go to Mars. Lucky token holders can have the prospect to win prizes from Tesla, the Boring Company, and Neuralink, in addition to an exclusive trip to the Red Planet,” the fake news outlet page reads.

If that every one sounds too good to be true, that’s since it is. There’s also a link on the landing page to direct users to an area where they can buy the scam crypto. The web site at spacexcrypto.com is arguably more polished than the fake Telegraph.

Why do we’d like a landingpage in any respect? Why doesn’t the Twitter ad simply direct to the fake SpaceX page? It may very well be related to the way in which Twitter filters ads. Twitter could blacklist ads linking to sites like spacexcrypto.com where the scam is currently situated. But by directing the user first to a site like telegra.ph, or another variety of news-themed landing pages arrange by the scammers, it’s harder to dam the scammers.

As I discussed, I’ve seen a whole lot of these scam ads this 12 months. It’s not clear how much money Twitter could also be making off these scams. Twitter has not responded to the questions that were emailed Sunday. I’ll update this text if I hear back.

Whatever you do, don’t try to purchase SpaceX crypto. It’s a scam. And given how common the ads are on Twitter, it’s a scam that at the very least some people have to be falling for.