Don’t change your Twitter name to Elon Musk unless you want Twitter to lock your account

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Twitter has a really bad cryptocurrency “giveaway” problem on their hands right now, including using fake accounts of influential people, like Elon Musk, to push the scans. So, in an effort to curb this growing epidemic, Twitter is now locking any non-verified account that changes their display name to Elon Musk.

The problem first started when scammers and spambots would essentially hijack replies from Elon Musk’s tweets. The bots would use a display name of Elon Musk and would go as far as using the same profile picture, however, the only thing that’s different is the actual Twitter handle.

An excellent example of this is the Elom Tusk account, which has been running a scam that offers people free cryptocurrency, which apparently isn’t the case.

https://twitter.com/raaleh/status/1019481414855806976

To nip this problem in the bud, Twitter will start locking any unverified accounts that change their name to Elon Musk. Specifically, any unverified account without an associated phone number will be immediately locked out.

In a statement provided to The Verge, the company notes,

As part of our continuing efforts to combat spam and malicious activity on our service, we’re testing new measures to challenge accounts that use terms commonly associated with spam campaigns. We are continually refining these detections based on changes in spammy activity.

The company wouldn’t comment whether or not they were implementing this new security measure for any other public figure’s Twitter account.

Moral of the story: Don’t change your display name to Elon Musk unless you want to be immediately locked out of your account.

Have you seen these bots in the wild? Let us know down below. 

For more social news, make sure to check out: 

• Twitter is demoting certain accounts so terrible people have less presence on the site
• We need to talk about the Black Metal Cats Twitter account and how fucking awesome it is
• If your follower count dropped this week, you’re not alone – here’s why

Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com.