Scientists used AI to find and track 95K ‘cryptocurrency free giveaway’ scams on Twitter

Due to the permissionless nature of the Lists feature on the social network, it provides a basic networking tool for scammers to exploit.To identify which lists dealt with giveaway rip-offs, the group trained a natural language processing tool on information from previously determined free gift scams. Source: Li, et alThe researchers were able to identify almost 100,000 instances of free gift rip-off lists using this method, which allowed them to assemble information on previously unreported fraud websites and wallets.Using this information, the group obtained various insights into how these frauds unfold, how fraudsters target victims and the approximate number of victims scammed during the one-year study period. Per the paper:”By tracking the deals of the scam cryptocurrency addresses, this work uncovers that over 365 victims have actually been attacked by the rip-off, resulting in an estimated monetary loss of 872K USD.