Elon Musk calls out cryptocurrency scam epidemic on Twitter after being caught up in it

Fake accounts purporting to be well-known tech figures are 'giving away' free ethereum and other cryptocurrencies

Thousands of scam Twitter accounts attempt to trick people into believing famed tech figures are giving away free cryptocurrency (REUTERS)

Elon musk is the latest tech figure to speak out against a cryptocurrency scam currently engulfing Twitter, after fraudulent accounts appeared on his feed.

Armies of bots have been mimicking Mr Musk, as well as other other high-profile users, in an attempt to trick people into sending them cryptocurrencies like ethereum.

Elon Musk tweeted to his 22.2 million followers on Monday: "I want to know who is running the Etherium scambots! Mad skillz."

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin replied to the tweet by pleading with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to "help us," while also noting his frustration that the Tesla and SpaceX boss had been caught up in one of the negative side effects of the innovative cryptocurrency. Mr Buterin didn't mention that the billionaire entrepreneur had also misspelled ethereum.

Mr Buterin has been consistently targeted by scam accounts and has even taken the measure of adding "Not giving away ETH" to his user name.

The fake accounts use the name and profile photos of users like Mr Musk and Mr Buterin in order to encourage their legions of followers to send them funds as part of a giveaway that will see them double their money.

However, anyone sending ethereum or other cryptocurrencies to the fake accounts are unlikely to ever receive anything back.

For its part, Twitter reportedly suspended more than 1 million fake and suspicious accounts each day in recent months in an effort to stifle the flow of fake news and scams.

Data obtained by The Washington Post revealed that Twitter suspended 70 million accounts in May and June, coming largely as a reaction to the spread of misinformation on the platform during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

But despite these measures, Twitter has faced criticism for not introducing sufficient measures to properly filter out scam accounts, which have been appearing in Mr Musk's feed since March and plaguing the platform since the beginning of the year.