The monetization of verification, which has been Twitter's biggest change since Elon Musk took over, appears to have been beneficial to phishing scammers and very expensive for many crypto advocates and NFT collectors. These con artists appear to be concentrating most of their efforts on people who are very young or very old, have difficulty reading, or have other learning disabilities, according to a Twitter thread from <a href="https://twitter.com/g13m" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">@g13m</a>.

The con involves the following: A criminal, in this instance a YouTuber and internet troll known as BlueXBT and JB’s Adventures, sets their name to be nearly identical to a well-known brand or individual by purchasing verification (blue or gold) for a minimal amount of money (a blue checkmark costs $8 per month, while a gold checkmark costs $1,000 per month). After they have accomplished this, they use spam and bots to increase the number of followers they have, create identical avatars and bios, and block the account they are impersonating to avoid immediately alerting the other person.

[embed]https://twitter.com/g13m/status/1675944577956474886[/embed]
<h2>Alphabet checks Twitter accounts for 'fake' status in a bid to monetize them</h2>
The con is relatively simple to carry out at this point, requiring only an automated bot to respond to large accounts that tweet frequently and occasionally check direct messages for marks. You will notice that large brand accounts attempt to combat this by stating in a tweet at the end of a thread that any tweets below the previous one are inevitably spam and scams from their account. However, this alone will not solve the issue.

The monetization of verification has completely destroyed the meaning of a checkmark, despite the obvious shortcomings of the previous verification system, which included a lack of transparency regarding who was verified and why. Swindlers have been able to prosper as a result.

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<h2>Elon verification: Scammers have found a way to profit - just pay the price</h2>
Musk was under the impression that putting a paywall between fraudsters and verification would hinder their efforts, but in reality, it has simply imposed a cost on doing business. Swindlers are also more than willing to pay this price. Indeed, BlueXBT was able to steal over $200,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and NFTs from one individual in the most recent scam that was reported, 200Xing his initial investment in a single Twitter Gold verified account. Since raising rates will make verification difficult for many simply from a financial standpoint, it is unclear how Musk will address this problem. Furthermore, if nothing is done, scammers will continue to regularly phish and earn a profit.

Scammers Make Millions Using Twitter Verification

The monetization of verification, which has been Twitter's biggest change since Elon Musk took over, appears to have been beneficial to phishing scammers.

Sonakshi is into the crypto world ever since she heard about it and is pursuing her interest through Cryptoknowmics. She is a sensational poet, technical writer and content strategist.

Scammers Make Millions Using Twitter Verification

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