Scammers Abusing ExTwitter’s Fake ‘Verification’ Program To Prey On Angry Consumers

Scams

from the give-me-your-bank-account,-you-can-trust-me,-I-have-an-X dept

One thing that the old Twitter was pretty good for was getting help on customer service problems. Rather than having to call customer service lines and wait on hold for hours on end only to be given the run around, many people found that complaining on Twitter was a lot faster and more helpful (likely, in part, because the complaints were public).

This was one of many areas where exTwitter’s old verification system actually worked well. People could trust that when a company responded to such a complaint, that the response was actually from the company. Some of us tried to explain all this to Elon days after he took over, but Elon is not one to listen to people who actually know stuff. He’s pretty sure whatever brain-fart he had must be right.

Since then, the Twitter Blue program merged into what had been the blue check verification program (removing all the verification aspects), and then gradually adjusted the name to what… is now… I guess… “X Premium”? But all along it’s been subject to all sorts of fraud and abuse, because Elon seems unable to understand what verification means, or that scammers might find it worth paying $8 to scam.

And, thus, we find out that scammers are impersonating companies and responding to complaining consumers in order to steal from them.

Bank customers and airline passengers are among those at risk of phishing scams when they complain to companies via X. Fraudsters, masquerading as customer service agents, respond under fake X handles and trick victims into disclosing their bank details to get a promised refund.

They typically win the trust of victims by displaying the blue checkmark icon, which until this year denoted accounts that had been officially verified by X.

That’s fantastic for brand safety, isn’t it? I’m sure those banks and airlines will be thrilled when Linda Yaccarino calls them, begging for their advertising dollars.

Andrew Thomas was contacted by a scam account after posting a complaint to the travel platform Booking.com. “I’d been trying since April to get a refund after our holiday flights were cancelled and finally resorted to X,” he said.

“I received a response asking me to follow them, and DM [direct message] them with a contact number. They then called me via WhatsApp asking for my reference number so they could investigate. Later they called back to say that I would be refunded via their payment partner for which I’d need to download an app.”

Thomas became suspicious and checked the X profile. “It looked like the real thing, but I noticed that there was an unexpected hyphen in the Twitter handle and that it had only joined X in July 2023,” he said.

“I then checked the WhatsApp caller ID and found it was a Kenyan number. I’ve since come across other fake Booking.com Twitter accounts which are following customers who are at their wits’ end trying to get a refund and have resorted to X to air their grievance with the company.”

Cool cool.

In June, passengers whose easyJet and BA flights had been cancelled were targeted by cybercriminals using fake profiles after they resorted to X to demand refunds. Both airlines told the Observer that fraudulent accounts are reported to X. BA has a pinned tweet alerting users to fake accounts.

Lovely. I had 3 flights cancelled in June (it was quite a month!). If I were still using exTwitter, I likely would have complained there. Guess I protected myself from scammers by no longer using that unsafe platform.

Filed Under: blue checks, elon musk, scams, twitter blue, verification
Companies: twitter, x