Scammers pile on to impersonate WorldCoin on Twitter following token launch
Twitter announced its rebrand to ‘X’ on July 24, the same day the Worldcoin token launched and provided an opportunity for scammers.
Several fake accounts on X — formerly Twitter — were pushing malicious links to followers following the launch of the Worldcoin human identity verification token.
July 24 marked Twitter’s rebrand to the letter ‘X’ as well as the launch of the Worldcoin token. Though the change in brand has had mixed reactions online, the social media platform has not changed its policy of purchasing or applying to display differently colored check marks based on the type of account — a policy that went into effect in December 2022 while Elon Musk was CEO.
Since launching its Twitter account in August 2009 and later receiving a gold checkmark for a business, Worldcoin has seen a number of impersonators arise. Though dozens if not hundreds of fake Twitter accounts bear Worldcoin’s logo and variations of its name, at least 7 at one point showed a blue checkmark, requiring the scammer to pay $8/month.
At the time of publication, Twitter had suspended many of these fake accounts pushing an airdrop for the Worldcoin token onto followers. Many fake accounts created prior to the launch of the Worldcoin token also stepped up the frequency of their tweets since July 24.
Note that there are a lot of scammers out there posing as “worldcoin”
And people might have reached out to you promising you cash or even future wealth after investing
Kindly DYOR before interacting with any persons/project posing as Worldcoin
1/11
— Steve (@stevekimoi) July 27, 2023
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Ironically, the Worldcoin project said it was aimed at distinguishing real people from bots by providing retinal scans for identity verification. The project saw more than 2 million people sign up prior to the official launch, with the goal of getting more than 2 billion if not the entire world. Since launching the token, Worldcoin co-founder Sam Altman reported one person was “getting verified every 8 seconds” through iris scans around the world.
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