Surprise! As Ripple thought it won’t be affected by the scams and hacking happening left and right. At this point, the firm that distributes XRP has been targeted on different social media platforms; LinkedIn.
CEO Brad Garlinghouse has announced the situation. With a post on Twitter, he advised users that at least several bogus profiles of Chris Larsen, co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, have emerged on LinkedIn. One of these is quite strange because the account is “Chief Executive Officer at Bitcoin.”
Another day, another platform hosting scams… @LinkedIn is the latest, with imposter profiles created by bad actors. PSA: stay vigilant and skeptical of suspicious requests/messages. If it looks like a scam, it probably is! pic.twitter.com/2cSQaZJFtE
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) July 30, 2020
For those with a minimum of knowledge with cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is decentralized and cannot have CEOs. Furthermore, the date published that shows the start of this phantom job background is: 2006. But Bitcoin was born between 2008 and 2009.
Nevertheless, it is not yet identified who created these fake accounts and how they are being used.
What is evident is that on social networks, cryptocurrency-related scams seem to run unchallenged and uninterrupted. This is precisely what Brad Garlinghouse is complaining about his post:
“Another day, another platform hosting scams: LinkedIn is the latest, with imposter profiles created by bad actors. PSA: stay vigilant and sceptical of suspicious requests/messages. If it looks like a scam, it probably is!”
The struggle of Ripple with Social Media Scam
Ripple has proclaimed war on this kind of scams that involve XRP on social media networks. In previous months they stated that they desired to sue YouTube that enabled the propagation of channels advertising scams using the name of Ripple and its crypto XRP.
The allegation is that they seem to take it lightly that they are not doing enough to stop the problem. To the fact that Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak also sued Google’s video giant for the same reason, i.e., for a fake Bitcoin giveaway promoted with his face, proves that the platform has not solved this sort of issue at all.
This is a concern that not only corrupts the image that the (fake) promoters are representing but is detrimental to many users, who openly fall victim to these frauds committed apparently by well-known or prominent individuals in the industry.
Ripple was not spared from Twitter hack
This entire situation shattered the night the Twitter hack occurred. Ripple’s account was also hacked, advertising a fake XRP giveaway. Brad Garlinghouse promptly alerted users that it was a scam. Nevertheless, thanks to the other hacked profiles, the scammers succeeded to collect about 12 BTC worth more than $110,000.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, reiterated out how this “catastrophic” event happened in the noise of a need that the crypto industry has been requiring for a long time: more protection on social networks.
The danger is that the evil actors will only jump from one platform to another, jumping from YouTube and Twitter to another social network like Linkedin and who knows where next time.
Related Story:
No Comment