Good day everyone,
I hope you are all well and having excellent day, welcome to CryptoGod-1’s blog on all things crypto. As part of the crypto community, I am certain we have all seen the "Crypto Giveaway" postings on Twitter over the past couple of years. With so many bad actors in the space, the San Diego State University has deployed an AI to help uncover which of these are actually scams.
GiveawayScamHunter AI
The San Diego State University have announced the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) which is capable of detecting and exposing cryptocurrency giveaway scams on Twitter (X). It has been named the GiveawayScamHunter and the automated system has already managed to detect and identify more than 95,000 scam list. These were created by 87,617 accounts on the social media platform between June 2022 and June 2023.
Through using the GiveawayScamHunter the researchers were able to extract website and wallet addresses associated with these scams and this led to the uncovering of 327 scam giveaway internet domains. It also exposed 121 cryptocurrency wallets which are associated with these new scams. In doing so, they were able to provide valuable insights into how these scams work, which includes identifying how the scammers target victims and the estimated number of victims scammed during the one-year study period.
According to the data, an estimated 365 or more victims were attacked by crypto scams during the period, and this resulted in more than $872,000 being stolen from them. The researchers also discovered that the feature Twitter Lists, which is a networking tool available on the platform, has become a prime facilitator for the scammers to exploit due to their permissionless nature.
How GiveawayScamHunter was Created
For the team to be able to create the GiveawayScamHunter AI, it required them training the AI with a natural language processing tool on data from previously identified scams. This then allowed the AI to identify which lists on Twitter were involved in the giveaway scams.
Almost 100,000 instances of giveaway scam lists were discovered and identified from the data collected, and each of them were from previously unreported scam websites and wallets. The researchers went on to add that they shared their findings, along with the associated accounts, domains, and wallet addresses, with both the Twitter and crypto community.
The downside to this is that although the information has been shared and users have been alerted to the possibility of scams, only 43.9% of the associated accounts remain active. This was as of the 10th of August 2023 when the paper was published. According to the paper:
"Our analysis also shows that 43.9% of spam accounts still remain active as of this writing, implying the urgent needs of detecting the spam accounts and preventing the dissemination on Twitter."
AI in Scams and Scam Detecting
With the level of cryptocurrency giveaway scams on social media platforms rising, the need for detecting and stopping them has grown. With more and more bad actors in the space making use of the AI technology to create new methods of fraud and deception, it is important that the AI-powered tools are used right back against them. Scams make use of leveraging the AI to amplify their reach and create a seemingly loyal fanbase of thousands of people. The fake accounts and interaction can create a seemingly lifelike account which gives the illusion of credibility and popularity to their scam projects.
Scammers can also make use of AI-driven chatbots or virtual assistants, which will engage with individuals to provide investment advice, promote fake tokens and initial coin offerings, or offer high-yield investment opportunities. Making use of AI to detect these sort of scams in real time is imperative, as the emergence of AI has challenged the one thought of social proof-of-work, which meant that crypto projects with greater and more loyal followings online must be legitimate.
Have a great day.
Peace. CryptoGod-1.
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