The cryptocurrency boom has attracted millions of people looking for earn money effortlessly. There is no hook more powerful than that, and that desire to become an instant millionaire is also the best bait for crypto scammers.
The Business Insider website has carried out an investigation on the denunciations of dozens of financial influencers from Instagram and YouTubewhich warn about the existence of dozens of accounts cloning your contentpretending to be them contact their followers and propose all kinds of scams.
These influencers complain that YouTube and Instagram are not doing enough to stop these practicesand some have even seen their accounts closed for days accusing them of scams that their clones had committed.
Business Insider has detected at least 20 fake accounts associated with personal finance influencer Marko Zlatic, who has 826,000 YouTube subscribers. Instagrammer Rose Han, who runs the finance account Investing with Rose, has at least 17 clone accounts.
Scammers copy absolutely everything. From the profile picture to family photos, stories, etc. As we can see here, the only difference is the change from an “s” to a “c” in the name:
These scammers get to buy fake followersto the point that the clone account has more followers than the original, as can be seen in the previous image.
Using bots, they track the followers of the original account and send them messages posing as the financial influencer. Most of them are “offers” and “businesses” associated with the purchase of new cryptocurrencies of dubious origin. But there is everything, even subscriptions to pornographic services.
Clone accounts block original accountsso that they cannot discover their data and report them.
Influencers complain about how little protected they are. Authenticating the original Instagram account is an ordeal: some have even sent photos, documents, even their passport, and after several weeks, they still haven’t authenticated it. Others, as we say, have come to see how Instagram has closed their account, accusing them of the scams of their clones.
This is a major problem, because news of scams in their name undermines their credibility, and makes their followers distrust them.
YouTube has begun to take measures: it is testing a system that allows the owners of a channel appoint moderators for video commentsand the option of block certain fake words or names used by scammers.
Some influencers have reached hire external companies such as Social Clean, which monitor comments on videos or stories, and remove scam attempts as soon as they are posted. But there is little they can do when these clone accounts send messages to their followers.
It is a story as old as the world: where money circulates, swindlers pile up…
If you follow any financial influencer always be on the alert, and make sure you are contacting the original account.