My deleted Twitter account was instantly taken over by crypto scammers
Link to a tweet allegedly made by me: https://x.com/alinp32/status/1902159506257146353
A few months ago I deactivated my Twitter/X accounts because I got tired of the community there. After the expiration date has passed, the username was immediately snatched, gone through the “blue checkmark” process (I never had one) and started posting cryptocoin pumping content.
They kept my profile exactly the same to keep it looking trustworthy.
I guess this is just a PSA for people thinking about doing the same, best to keep your account and just not use it instead of having to explain yourself to people that followed you. Huh, just checked. My previously deleted account is now a suspended account, so I suppose probably it was taken over by scammers for a while. So, after deactivation and the expiry time, it doesn't reset the account or require and kind of verification to prove you were the prior owner, it just keeps everything as it was before? It doesn't keep everything as before, it's a new profile that started with no image, no description, 0 followers etc. This is clearly malicious if they recreated my account exactly as before, and it's also clearly premeditated if they kept track of my profile info. Right. That was the detail that escaped me. Thank you. Since twitter shafted their REST api, does that mean that these bots just scrape the site 24/7 and constantly check for when users deactivate? It's probably more likely taken into a troll farm where an employee of that organization is doing these posts using an AI prompt for each profile.