Scammers are targeting Twitter users who follow President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, Twitter account @JoyJoyce2 was hacked and changed to look identical to the president’s actual account, verification check and all. When people would tweet to Donald Trump on Wednesday, the hacked account would respond to say that Trump is offering “the biggest crypto-giveaway in the world.” It offered 5,000 ether and 500 Bitcoin as part of the scam. Yahoo Finance earlier covered the scam.
In order to take advantage of the fake offer, users would need to click on malicious sites that would steal their information.
Of course, the tweets were fake and the account was being run by a bot. But the scam is surprisingly common on Twitter and in many cases, people fall for it, thinking it’s legitimate. The scam has been used on other prominent accounts in the past.
What’s perhaps most concerning about it is how easily scammers can recreate an account to look like another. And if you don’t pay much attention and don’t look at the user account, you might think it’s real. Indeed, the only way to verify that it’s a fake account is to look at the actual account name.
The @JoeJoyce2 account, which is owned by rugby player Joy Joyce, has since been returned to the owner. But the feed is still filled with Donald Trump retweets the scammer left behind.