On July'15th 2020 we have seen how the Twitter accounts of high profile individuals were targeted in one of the worst security breaches in the history of social media. A total of 130 accounts were targeted by scammers.
A recent report suggests this year alone so far, Cryptocurrency scammers have had committed the biggest crypto-related-crimes amounting to almost a whopping $381 million USD.
# The Twitter Hack Saga Continues.....
The latest July'15th incident in which the twitter accounts of some prominent personalities like Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg & Jeff Bezos among others were hacked and the hackers posted messages promising users that they'd receive double the amount of Bitcoins if they send some bitcoins to the address provided therein.
The Scammers were able to steal a total of 13.14 BTC worth $120,000 approx within that short period of the hack incident as informed in a report by Chainalysis .
# The Chainalysis Report:-
Cryptocurrency analytics site Chainalysis in its data shows that compared to 2019 in which scams accounted for 74% of all crypto-related-crimes, this year in 2020 there was a drop in pace which could be attributed due to the absence of a major scam like PlusToken ponzi scheme. The figures this year could soar with other unreported scams being added in future for the final data.
Furthermore the report also noted that Twitter scams committed by hackers isn't new and is also known as 'Trust trading' scam "in which the scammer impersonates a notable person or company on social media and implores users to send them cryptocurrency in return for more later, have been going on for years".
(Image Credit:- CryptoScamDB courtesy Chainalysis)
The report also added that according to CryptoScamDB (an Open Source Database where you can report scams, see previous scams and get to know genuine verified domains related to cryptocurrencies) data 'Trust trading' is a widely reported scam as it accounts for 71% of all the
types of crypto scams since June'2018.
# Final Thoughts...
Unfortunately Cryptocurrency Scammers have become more successful each passing day with their ingenuity. They are continuously targeting Youtube (My Previous Post) and Twitter platforms with great success. Both these social media platforms as I have observed have allowed these scammers to flourish and this has been a trend lately. A thorough probe should be conducted and the culprits brought to book. The security parameters of the social platforms should be promptly taken care of as money hacked thru them can fall into wrong hands (terrorists). As per latest reports the hackers have already started to mix their bitcoins using some Bitcoin mixing service provider ( A Bitcoin mixing service is used to mislead third parties in creating a situation so as to unable them from tracing your Bitcoin transactions!)
Lastly we can only hope people would be clever enough not to fall victims of such scammers in future.
Thanks for Reading!
