The verified account of G Suite, the professional Gmail version, is the latest victim of Twitter bitcoin scams. The rampant “crypto giveaway” scams have scourged crypto Twitter for years and the social media giant seems to be struggling to contain them.

https://twitter.com/B_u_r_t_o_n/status/1062425103915466752

The scam follows a similar pattern

Even though it stayed online for only 10 minutes, the imposters promised lofty 10,000 BTC on behalf of Google, in “the biggest crypto giveaway in the world.” Like thousands of scams before, it asked to confirm the wallet address by sending 0.1 to 2 BTC with a promise of multiplying the amount ten-fold.

Speaking to Business Insider, a Google spokesperson stated that, “This morning an unauthorized promoted tweet was shared from the G Suite account. We removed the tweet and are investigating with Twitter now.“ Twitter added that the G Suite account was “inappropriately accessed and the situation remains closely monitored.

Twitter has been fighting a losing battle with a myriad of crypto fraudsters, who hijack verified accounts of major brands, crypto companies, entrepreneurs or celebrities. The ploy is pretty much the same each time – asking to send a small amount for wallet confirmation, with a promise to multiply the amount. Unfortunately, the multiplication part never happens. Even though the company said it installed some additional security barriers, they do not seem to be working.

Major US retail chain is also Targeted

Target, one of the biggest American retail chains, has fell victim to crypto scammers yesterday. A verified account with almost 2 million followers was used to promote another fake bitcoin giveaway. A message written in broken English said that Target is giving away 5000 BTC to celebrate the introduction of crypto payments. Needless to say, there is not a single part of this sentence that is correct. Well, except for the broken English bit.

The company gained access to the account soon after and hopefully nobody was gullible enough to send the BTC for “verification”. Target issued an official statement, saying that, “Early this morning, our Twitter account was inappropriately accessed. The access lasted for approx. half an hour & one fake tweet was posted during that time about a Bitcoin scam. We have regained control of the account, are in close contact with Twitter & are investigating now.“

We can only hope that better security measures are introduced on Twitter sooner rather than later. Twitter scams tarnish an already shaky image of cryptocurrencies, which have taken another hit today, following a major sell-off.

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