SlowMist reports 80% of X comments related to phishing software

NotATether

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Quote from: JeromeTash on February 02, 2024, 03:23:51 PM

X seriously has a lot of work to do. Reading replies from a crypto related post is completely annoying lately. All you see are spam accounts either shilling fake tokens or sharing phishing links. I miss the old times when the engagement was organic with no annoying bots like it is right now.

You can thank Elon and his X Premium blue-checks sale for that. Now almost all the phishing accounts are wearing blue checks and they appear above all the non-checked, usually legitimate accounts.

X is chronically understaffed, because Elon is reducing the workforce to its bare bones, so nobody has time for content moderation anymore. They just automate it out.

acroman08

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Quote from: JeromeTash on February 03, 2024, 09:59:39 AM

Quote from: acroman08 on February 02, 2024, 05:03:19 PM

seeing how rampant these scams and bots are on their platform now, I have a feeling they don't really care as long as they get paid for the ads these scams post. also, if I remember correctly their "solution" for it is to start charging people to use their platform(which I think is stupid).

Speaking of paid ads, the scam is even worse on crypto twitter while I am on the mobile app. On the web version, I don't see the ads, maybe because my browser blocks them, but on mobile it's so bad I keep seeing the trading signal ads on my Feed and different threads. The trading signals are obviously a scam.

In a day I can block over 20 accounts, but a new account which a similar ad just keeps popping up. I have reported very many ads before, but nothing has changes.

it's one of the reasons why I never got the urge to spend time on that platform, even before Elon Musk took over Twitter the scam/spam was already somewhat bad and when he took over, it just got extremely worse.

I used to do the same thing, I mean, reporting a lot of scam ads but it was on Facebook but I stopped now because I noticed that nothing really happens when you report it, I kept seeing the same ads and the account I reported.

ABCbits

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For curious reader, you can read the full report on https://slowmist.medium.com/spotting-the-difference-identifying-genuine-and-fake-twitter-accounts-14258ec0493a. It has few interesting information,

Quote from: JeromeTash on February 02, 2024, 03:23:51 PM

X seriously has a lot of work to do. Reading replies from a crypto related post is completely annoying lately. All you see are spam accounts either shilling fake tokens or sharing phishing links. I miss the old times when the engagement was organic with no annoying bots like it is right now.

Even when you try to follow trending topics or hashtags, all you see is phishing link or airdrop spam on the feed. They should borrow a left from reddit perhaps.

In past, their worker got fired while the owner frequently make tweet or reply, i don't expect much change.

Alpha Marine

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I have said something similar to this before. I don't know if it's more common on X or if it's because I'm a frequent X user.
You'll see a lot of ads and tweets from scam accounts. When you make a tweet related to anything crypto or financial app, the tweet will immediately be attacked by scam accounts and bots. The comment section of a tweet by a popular person is usually filled with bots too.

It wasn't this bad before but since the takeover, it has been worse. Most times I report and block these accounts but there's only so much I can report and block. I feel like the new owners of Twitter don't even care about this because they seem to be doing nothing about it.
The worst part is, that getting verified on X these days is so cheap and easy that any hacker can get verified and scam people.

I don't know how things are on other social media sites but we all have to be careful how we use these sites.

dkbit98

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Quote from: zasad@ on February 02, 2024, 11:38:08 AM

In a report by SlowMist, scammers were found to be actively purchasing X accounts to use for scamming purposes. Users are usually sold in the Telegram messenger application, where there is an active market for this category of clients, experts claim.

I am not surprised to hear this at all. Roll Eyes

Twitter aka X or call it whatever you want has become no better since Musk took over, and it's going to be worse when he introduced some kind of payment there.
There are some people speculation that many comments are not even coming from real people, they are just combinationt of bots and fake accounts.
I know that in telegram you literally can't post anything in public chat or you will receive message from unknown scammer asking stupid questions.

Outhue

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Elon Musk disappointed me, when he took over I though things will be better with Twitter finally, while he was sacking some workers I was like finally, some adjustments will be made but he did nothing.

Legit projects that pass out a new tweet need to put a final warning sign below their tweet saying that anything under their warning is a scam attempt, imagine that, Twitter is a very bad place for crypto beginners, they will surely become a victim because everyone on that platform are trying to take advantage of people, they drop fake airdrop links and fake NFT claims, the list goes on.

As good and very informative that Twitter is for crypto lovers, it's a very unsafe place now, and if this keep going on it will affect the platform, for someone who is into crypto himself I never expected him to just sit back and do nothing, he knows better.

Cryptoprincess101

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Quote from: zasad@ on February 02, 2024, 11:38:08 AM

~~~

The rate of scam in X this days is really alarming as scammers have been using this social platforms to defraud and mislead their victims which pose a bad reputation to X owner Elon musk, this is really a matter of urgency because if the advertisement of malicious links and other scam strategies are not brought to a hault then the rate of individuals using X might start diminishing from time to time more especially newbies that's are new on the platform and doesn't understand or know more about the risk involved in using some of the malicious links being advertised.

hatshepsut93

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Musk is a believer of unrestrained freedom of speech and cutting the costs of business, so naturally he laid off a lot of people who were responsible for moderating twitter. And it all immediately backfired because the advertisers, who are the main clients of twitter, immediately started leaving the platform because it was becoming too toxic and they didn't want their brand to be associated with that.

So the growth of phishing comments is a natural outcome of Musk's incompetent management. Twitter still hasn't been replaced because it still has network effect and it's hard to beat that, but eventually it will fall.

PX-Z

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Sadly, yes. Previously, i tweeted/posted about the error in blockchain.com page, trustwallet related question, reposted the electrum update, and about the patren spam email, all of these posts mentioning their official handles, and almost 10-20 comments of this posts were from spammers, scammers, you named it. Comments have almost similar pattern like, speaking of problem, then mentioning or using hashtag with the name of the handle who help them, lol. But with the help of X algo, you won't get notified by it and eventually comments will be deleted without doing any kind of reporting to the posts.

PytagoraZ

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Quote from: zasad@ on February 02, 2024, 11:38:08 AM

https://bitcoinethereumnews.com/tech/slowmist-reports-80-of-x-comments-related-to-phishing-software/
"Cybersecurity company SlowMist analyzed social network X for malicious content.

Scam sleuths came to the conclusion that over 80% of comments under publications of well-known projects are related to phishing software.

That sounds really bad, I rarely use social media but I would be surprised if 80% of the links on X turned out to be phishing link. Apart from social media, phishing links also appear to spread via chat applications such as WA and Telegram

This month, two of my office friends' e-money accounts were hacked and maybe because they downloaded files from WA. Increasingly massive digitalization and a lack of knowledge about cyber security apparently makes fraudsters take advantage of it.

abel1337

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X/twitter is the primary social media choice of majority of crypto users, also the projects. They preferred it because X is much less stricter on crypto contents. Scammers/hackers would always take the opportunity to scam the greatest platform that they can ever put their phishing sites. I'm just shocked that hackers and scammers had built their community that organizes buy and sell of malicious services and products. It may become an industry if they continue to grow and if X/twitter can't stop them. Elon task to remove majority of the bots where half successful, I wonder how will he deal with the scammers and hackers on twitter.

People on twitter are getting scammed everyday and the result of this is increasing number of wanna be scammers and hackers.

JeromeTash

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Quote from: acroman08 on February 02, 2024, 05:03:19 PM

seeing how rampant these scams and bots are on their platform now, I have a feeling they don't really care as long as they get paid for the ads these scams post. also, if I remember correctly their "solution" for it is to start charging people to use their platform(which I think is stupid).

Speaking of paid ads, the scam is even worse on crypto twitter while I am on the mobile app. On the web version, I don't see the ads, maybe because my browser blocks them, but on mobile it's so bad I keep seeing the trading signal ads on my Feed and different threads. The trading signals are obviously a scam.

In a day I can block over 20 accounts, but a new account which a similar ad just keeps popping up. I have reported very many ads before, but nothing has changes.
The ads look like this https://twitter.com/carolpultz/status/1729623979386974530

lovesmayfamilis

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Quote from: Sandra_hakeem on February 02, 2024, 04:23:31 PM

This is an update that y'all should have gotten acquainted with already... The sad part of the story is that - most of those accounts aren't even hacked/sold... They've got some tech with organic tools to increase followers, likes and comments... Its got to be some bots yunno

aside that, having a verification tick would also serve as an easy bait to create trust and sponsorship; I'm gonna blame Elon musk for making the tick "buyable". You also gotta know that these social media meniacs ain't even interested in ways people get scammed on their app,.. they won't be selling out ticks if they really care.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

I think that Musk doesn’t care about what’s happening on his network now. By introducing what he considers important rules for freedom of speech on Twitter, he created another form of income for scammers. Type in a search engine “buy real Twitter accounts," and you will see how many people want to occupy this sales niche.
Musk is just increasing his capital; what happens outside his money is unlikely to bother him.

nelson4lov

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The security of one's asset entirely lies in the hands of the user — not the project, X, the wallet provider, but the user. Seeing that X's value has depreciated heavily from the value Elon Musk got it for, he will have to keep those ads running for a lot longer if he is serious about recouping some of those monies.

What to do as a crypto user on CT:
— Verify, don't trust.
— don't click anything in comments
— clear approvals
— only connect wallet if you're 100% sure it's the right one. Not 99%but 100%.

boyptc

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That's a lot.

It means that X is swarmed by these phishing commentors and scammers/hackers. Thanks to the easy policy of Elon and now, this problem has came out or actually it just came into fruition because it was there long time ago before his acquisition.

He has to do something with this. Are we going to see the typical scam continuously about the Vitalik "Not giving Ether" Buterin? This is disgusting if these reports came and he's on the position.

acroman08

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Quote from: JeromeTash on February 02, 2024, 03:23:51 PM

X seriously has a lot of work to do. Reading replies from a crypto related post is completely annoying lately. All you see are spam accounts either shilling fake tokens or sharing phishing links. I miss the old times when the engagement was organic with no annoying bots like it is right now.

seeing how rampant these scams and bots are on their platform now, I have a feeling they don't really care as long as they get paid for the ads these scams post. also, if I remember correctly their "solution" for it is to start charging people to use their platform(which I think is stupid).

Quote from: zasad@ on February 02, 2024, 11:38:08 AM

-snip

80%? That is just sad, they clearly failed to properly regulate their platform.

Sandra_hakeem

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Goodnight, ohh Leo!!! 🦅

This is an update that y'all should have gotten acquainted with already... The sad part of the story is that - most of those accounts aren't even hacked/sold... They've got some tech with organic tools to increase followers, likes and comments... Its got to be some bots yunno

aside that, having a verification tick would also serve as an easy bait to create trust and sponsorship; I'm gonna blame Elon musk for making the tick "buyable". You also gotta know that these social media meniacs ain't even interested in ways people get scammed on their app,.. they won't be selling out ticks if they really care.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

snowpega

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Yes, these days X is playing a bad role in trapping people from scamable posts. actually, the shit idea behind blue tick makes it more easy to trap people I also faced some of that kind of post on X but TBH, lucky I am safe from them. I used to avoid taking quick action on posts because of these scammy posts/comments. X makes more easier for scammers to trap the user so always verify everything you face on X before taking any action.

JeromeTash

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X seriously has a lot of work to do. Reading replies from a crypto related post is completely annoying lately. All you see are spam accounts either shilling fake tokens or sharing phishing links. I miss the old times when the engagement was organic with no annoying bots like it is right now.

Even when you try to follow trending topics or hashtags, all you see is phishing link or airdrop spam on the feed. They should borrow a left from reddit perhaps.

zasad@

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https://bitcoinethereumnews.com/tech/slowmist-reports-80-of-x-comments-related-to-phishing-software/
"Cybersecurity company SlowMist analyzed social network X for malicious content.

Scam sleuths came to the conclusion that over 80% of comments under publications of well-known projects are related to phishing software.

In a report by SlowMist, scammers were found to be actively purchasing X accounts to use for scamming purposes. Users are usually sold in the Telegram messenger application, where there is an active market for this category of clients, experts claim.

According to the study, attackers are typically offered a wide selection of accounts, among which there are accounts similar to the profiles of well-known crypto projects. Such a “product” may have a different number of subscribers and a long date of registration on the platform.

After purchasing an account, scammers use advertising tools to increase trust on the social network. With their help, they increase the number of subscribers, likes and promote their profile on site X. Experts note that such services are offered not by the platform itself, but by third-party services, which often accept payment in crypto assets."

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