Target Twitter Account Hacked by Bitcoin Scammers

A recent hack involving the Twitter of retailer Target has wise investors doubling down on too-good-to-be-true offers.

Target Becomes the Target

The cryptocurrency community is no stranger to hacks and scams and most hodlers are wise enough to steer clear of too-good-to-be-true ICOs and The Real Real Elon Musk #GivingAwayFreeETH Twitter scams. In spite of this, hackers remain undeterred and numerous get rich quick schemes and all sorts of scams continue to proliferate on the internet.

The most recent of these involves American retail giant Target and it’s official Twitter account. The company was recently the victim of a somewhat obvious scam but nonetheless, there are surely a few innocent doo-gooders who fall for these blatant schemes.

Apparently, the scammers hacked into Target’s official Twitter account to promote a Bitcoin giveaway. After co-opting the account, the hackers falsely posted that Target was introducing cryptocurrency payments online and instore and to celebrate the event the company would give away 5,000 Bitcoin.

Buy One Get Three Free!

In order to enlist in the crypto-raffle, participants were asked to verify their BTC address by sending up to 2 BTC in order to enter a raffle to win up to 40 BTC in return. The post also mentioned that participants who sent 1.00 BTC would get an additional 200% back. Twitter did confirm that Target’s official account was compromised for a brief period of time, and reinforced that impersonating another user is a direct violation of Twitter policy. Target has nearly two million Twitter followers and it quickly deleted the tweet without issuing a statement.

Since 2017’s explosion in cryptocurrency awareness, Bitcoin and Ethereum scams have become something of a routine affair on Twitter. The number of figures like Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk giving away ETH has led the real owners of these accounts to tag #NotGivingAwayETH or #NotGivingAwayBTC to their Twitter accounts.

Don’t Knock the Hustle

Twitter has taken measures to prevent crypto-scams, yet scammers now resort to hacking into verified accounts and posting Bitcoin and Ethereum giveaways. As reported previously by Bitcoinist, crypto-giveaway scams are surprisingly lucrative and a recent interview with a ‘professional’ scammer revealed that this simple scams typically net $50,000 – $100,000 per day.

Should Twitter do more to prevent these type of hacks from occurring or is it up to an investor’s own recognizance to differentiate a scam from an investment opportunity? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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