Twitter Scammers are Taking Advantage of the Blue Tick Following Elon Musk's Announcement

When new Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced the price increase of the blue tick subscription, many users immediately reacted to the sudden change.

Some content creators said that a monthly charge of $8 per month is too much just to get verified on the platform. While some people are worried about this, others take this as an opportunity to scam people on social media.

Twitter Blue Tick Leads to the Increase of Impersonators

For those unfamiliar with Blue Tick, it's a subscription service intended for people who want to verify their accounts on Twitter.

Before Musk announced the price increase for this service, it was only made for content creators, news outlets, government accounts, and other organizations or people of public interest.

People take this moment to deceive other Twitter users who usually follow popular brands and celebrities. With the blue tick paid service, everyone can have their account verified, so there's no question whether your account is real or not as long as it has a blue mark.

Business Insider spotted that some dubious accounts have been impersonating influencers and artists, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James.

Immediately, the user with @joeahvr Twitter ID was identified as the one behind the fake Zuckerberg account. The microblogging site suspended his account right away for violating the policies of the platform.

Another fakester has tried to imitate LeBron by tweeting, "I am officially requesting a trade. Thank you #LakersNation for all the support through the years. Onto bigger and better things."

If you don't pay close attention to this tweet, you could already conclude that LeBron is about to leave the Lakers for good. While it's too good to be true since Lebron's contract is still not ending with LAL, some people believe that the NBA star is about to leave the team soon.

Rockstar Games, the publisher behind the "GTA" series, has also become the subject of blue tick accounts. There's an impersonator of RG who tweets that the "Grand Theft Auto 6" will be released this Nov. 18.

Twitter is Adding a Gray Check Mark For 'Legitimate' Accounts

To intensify its campaign against scammers and fakesters on the platform, Twitter confirms that it's adding another verification mark for persons or groups that are already verified.

GSM Arena reports that Elon Musk still has no gray check mark on his account, but several news outlets, such as The Verge and New York Times, are spotted to have one.

Indeed, getting another verification icon is another project that needs to be rolled out as soon as possible to "real" and legitimate people and organizations.

Until there are gullible people who can't distinguish fake from real, scammers will continue to fool the public into knowing that the information that they have is authentic and unquestionable.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry