Elon Musk has raised concerns about the "dire problem" of cryptocurrency scams on Twitter.

The Tesla CEO has been consistently targeted by scammers in recent years, who use fake accounts toimpersonate him and trick people into sending them cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.

Scams typically involve fake accounts holding "giveaways", which require people to send cryptocurrency to a digital address in order to receive a greater amount in return.

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Analysis byThe Independentin 2018 found that more than 400 people sent thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency to scammers, however Musk claims the problem is even worse now.

"The crypto scam level on Twitter is reaching new levels. This is not cool," he tweeted to his 31 million followers. "Troll/ bot networks on Twitter are a dire problem for adversely affecting public discourse and ripping people off."

On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'

Reuters

On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices

Lazlo Hanyecz

Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin

On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash

REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis

The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed

Getty Images

In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim

Getty Images

On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash

REUTERS

Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year

Reuters

On 3 January, 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin appeared. It came less than a year after the pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto detailed the cryptocurrency in a paper titled 'Bitcoin: A peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'

Reuters

On 22 May, 2010, the first ever real-world bitcoin transaction took place. Lazlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins the equivalent of $90 million at today's prices

Lazlo Hanyecz

Bitcoin soon gained notoriety for its use on the dark web. The Silk Road marketplace, established in 2011, was the first of hundreds of sites to offer illegal drugs and services in exchange for bitcoin

On 29 October, 2013, the first ever bitcoin ATM was installed in a coffee shop in Vancouver, Canada. The machine allowed people to exchange bitcoins for cash

REUTERS/Dimitris Michalakis

The world's biggest bitcoin exchange, MtGox, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after losing almost 750,000 of its customers bitcoins. At the time, this was around 7 per cent of all bitcoins and the market inevitably crashed

Getty Images

In 2015, Australian police raided the home of Craig Wright after the entrepreneur claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He later rescinded the claim

Getty Images

On 1 August, 2017, an unresolvable dispute within the bitcoin community saw the network split. The fork of bitcoin's underlying blockchain technology spawned a new cryptocurrency: Bitcoin cash

REUTERS

Towards the end of 2017, the price of bitcoin surged to almost $20,000. This represented a 1,300 per cent increase from its price at the start of the year

Reuters

He urged followers to report any suspicious activity as soon as they see it in order to prevent people from falling for the scams.

Twitter could also take lessons from Google, he suggested, by dropping the prominence of malicious accounts.

"Trolls/ bots just need to be deemphasized relative to probably real people who aren't being paid to push an agenda or scam," he wrote. "Google still shows bs/ scam pages, they're just several clicks away."

The issue was raised at a recent employee conference at Twitter, when Elon Musk appeared via video link to respond to Jack Dorsey'squestion about how to improve the platform.

Musk said it would be helpful to differentiate between real and fake users in order to protect the integrity of Twitter and restore trust in its users.

"Basically, how do you tell if the feedback is real or someone trying to manipulate the system, or probably real, or probably trying to manipulate the system," he said.

"What do people actually want, what are people actually upset about versus manipulation of the system by various interest groups."

Musk is not the only high-profile Twitter user to be targeted by such scams, with many figures within the cryptocurrency community also impersonated.

The founder of ethereum, VitalikButerin, has consistently called on Twitter to come up with a solution, as well as cryptocurrency advocate John McAfee.

Twitter has rules in place to prevent its users from being impersonated and claims to have cracked down on scams by implementing various tools.

"We're constantly adapting to bad actors evolving methods, and have made improvements in combating cryptocurrency scams on the platform," a spokesperson toldThe Independent.

"If we see content that is violative of our Financial Scams Policy we take action. We will continue to iterate and improve upon this policy and the industry evolves."

Read more from the original source:

This is not cool: Elon Musk attacks Twitter over impersonators scamming bitcoin from followers - The Independent