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18 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
18 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# Technique T0146.002: Paid Account Asset
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* **Summary**: Some online platforms afford accounts extra features, or other benefits, if the user pays a fee. For example, as of September 2024, content posted by a Paid Account on X (previously Twitter) is prioritised in the platform’s algorithm.
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* **Belongs to tactic stage**: TA15
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| Incident | Descriptions given for this incident |
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| -------- | -------------------- |
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| [I00116 Blue-tick scammers target consumers who complain on X](../../generated_pages/incidents/I00116.md) | <i>Consumers who complain of poor customer service on X are being targeted by scammers after the social media platform formerly known as Twitter changed its account verification process.<br><br>Bank customers and airline passengers are among those at risk of phishing scams when they complain to companies via X. Fraudsters, masquerading as customer service agents, respond under fake X handles and trick victims into disclosing their bank details to get a promised refund.<br><br>They typically win the trust of victims by displaying the blue checkmark icon, which until this year denoted accounts that had been officially verified by X.<br><br>Changes introduced this year allow the icon to be bought by anyone who pays an £11 monthly fee for the site’s subscription service, renamed this month from Twitter Blue to X Premium. Businesses that pay £950 a month receive a gold tick. X’s terms and conditions do not state whether subscriber accounts are pre-vetted.<br><br>Andrew Thomas was contacted by a scam account after posting a complaint to the travel platform Booking.com. “I’d been trying since April to get a refund after our holiday flights were cancelled and finally resorted to X,” he said.<br><br>“I received a response asking me to follow them, and DM [direct message] them with a contact number. They then called me via WhatsApp asking for my reference number so they could investigate. Later they called back to say that I would be refunded via their payment partner for which I’d need to download an app.”<br><br>Thomas became suspicious and checked the X profile. “It looked like the real thing, but I noticed that there was an unexpected hyphen in the Twitter handle and that it had only joined X in July 2023,” he said.</i><br><br>In this example a newly created paid account was created on X, used to direct users to other platforms (T0146.002: Paid Account Asset, T0146.003: Verified Account Asset, T0146.005: Lookalike Account ID, T0097.205: Business Persona, T0122: Direct Users to Alternative Platforms, T0143.003: Impersonated Persona, T0151.008: Microblogging Platform, T0150.001: Newly Created Asset). |
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| Counters | Response types |
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| -------- | -------------- |
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