Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss is getting annoyed by the increasing number of bogus Instagram accounts that impersonate him, and the photo-sharing behemoth seems to be reluctant to tackle this hot-button problem.
Hence, he decided to take the matter in his own hands by offering Instagram a comprehensive guide on how to detect the phonies in a recent Twitter thread.
He believes that it would prevent his impostors from scamming people out of crypto.
Dear @instagram — there are a number of of profiles pretending to be me and actively trying to scam people out of crypto. I regularly report these, but this strategy isn't really scalable and many of them still persist...a few thoughts on how to solve this: pic.twitter.com/MpNSC2pY1K
— Cameron Winklevoss (@winklevoss) May 26, 2020
Doing Instagram’s job
One of the two ‘Bitcoin billionaires’ claims that scammers tend to create exact copies of his verified account in order to add credibility. The same applies to his brother Tyles Winklevoss.
Hence, he says that it could be possible for Instagram to detect and delete such matches.
Taking this a step further, Winklevoss suggests identifying odd patterns in an account's behavior to determine whether it’s legitimate if there is no verification mark.
Those profiles that tend to be routinely impersonated should be marked as ‘high risk,’ which would make it easier to suspend fake profiles.
Social media in hot water
Numerous prominent members of the cryptocurrency industry have already complained about scams on social media that use their names for luring investors. This includes Ripple CEO Brad Galringhouse who slapped video streaming giant YouTube with a lawsuit for clamping down on XRP-related frauds back in April.
Facebook has also been taken to court on numerous occasions for not rushing to staunch fake advertising related to crypto.
Recently, Blockstream CEO Adam Back also slammed Twitter for ‘going AWOL’ after a tweet with his impostor who claimed to be Satoshi went viral.
twitter has gone awol @adan3us which is a straight up impostor, probably doing cloud mining scams, they have been studious ignoring me for weeks, and not taking offline. @twittersupport I will be sure to forward the defrauded / scammed user complaints your direction. come on!
— Adam Back (@adam3us) May 18, 2020