Fake ether token giveaways are clogging Twitter threads, and seemingly by the second. Targeting well-known ecosystem figures, doppelganger accounts are created, complete with matching avatars. A particularly active post can almost assuredly be counted on to receive seemingly organic calls for participation in free crypto programs hosted by the respective personality. And now they’re incorporating Google+ redirects. And it’s working. And Twitter seems to be either doing nothing about it or is just plain impotent.  

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Twitter Crypto Celebs Hounded by Fake Giveaways

Ari Paul, investor guru from Blocktower hedge fund fame, was on another multiple tweet philosophical lecture, spaced out and numbered. The topic was a meditation on over the counter and regular exchanges’ impacts on price. It proved so interesting, no personage less than Laura Shin, Forbes journalist, popular podcast host, and ecosystem gadfly attempted a read. She soon came up against what more and more Twitter users are facing: fairly elaborate ether (ETH) come-ons, fake giveaways using mirror’d accounts.

Ms. Shin’s trademark Valley Girl patois could almost be heard echoing through her corresponding response tweets of disgust and alarm: “Ari wrote an interesting thread, but FYI, @twitter and @jack, my experience reading it was marred by all the spam accounts touting free ETH that made it harder for me to find the real discussion.”

Just a few clicks later, and she discovered another awful truth: she’d been personally compromised. Someone with the account @XaedenJ was using Ms. Shin’s professional reputation and likeness to tacitly approve a 10,000 Ethereum giveaway, and it directs readers to a website asking for payment. The scam even went so far as to create a thread conversation about the giveaway, in