We all want to get rich quickly, and we all blindly trust anything that Elon Musk says. The combination of this can be a recipe for disaster online, if you aren't careful.
Elon Musk is guilty of doing a lot of crazy things -- shooting a Tesla car into space, starting a boring company -- but he isn't giving away free cryptocurrency online.
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If you're following Elon Musk online, then you know the guy is pretty unpredictable in what he shares online or whom he responds to. So on Twitter if you come across a URL which appears to be posted by Elon Musk himself, promising anyone who clicks on it easy cryptocurrency money in the form of Ethereum, most people would click on it and go right ahead.
Elon Musk is already a multi-billionaire -- so what if he wants to donate some of that money online in the form of cryptocurrency Ethereum??
This is a fake Elon Musk account
This is what we came across earlier in the day. If you just glance at this tweet, it looks like it's from the real Elon Musk -- it has thousands of likes and retweets.?
Then you click on the hyperlinked URL and actually see a QR code asking you to scan it to transfer Ethereum money into your cryptocurrency wallet.
Ben Longstaff
This right here is a trap. If you try to scan this QR code, chances are some bad things will happen to your phone -- because you're literally inviting a malicious piece of code to interact with your phone, through the camera app.
If you go back and check the Twitter account in question, it read @eltonmrusk -- Very easy to misread it as @elonmusk in a hurry. Especially, when the profile pic is similar to the real Elon Musk's. Notice how the fake post also tags the real Elon Musk on Twitter to piggyback and prey on unsuspecting followers.
This is a scary but impressive piece of social engineering. Shows you just how smart online bad guys are, and how if something seems too good to be true it probably is.
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