Former Pakistani prime minister and current head of one of the biggest political parties in the nation, Imran Khan, has acknowledged that hackers gained access to his Instagram account and used it to spread a cryptocurrency giveaway scam.
Imran Khan, a former prime minister of Pakistan and the present-day leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), one of the biggest political parties in the nation, is said to have confirmed that his Instagram account was compromised on Monday.
He told Dawn magazine that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, helped him quickly recover his account. He mentioned that the hackers posted a cryptocurrency link and a screenshot of a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to the account, which has 7.4 million followers, and said that he himself keeps an eye on it.
The politician’s account posted a cryptocurrency giveaway link that takes users to a website where Elon Musk and his company Spacex are featured. Scammers assert to be giving away litecoin, ether, dogecoin, and bitcoin (BTC) (LTC).
Scams involving cryptocurrency giveaways are very prevalent on well-known social media sites like Twitter and YouTube. Numerous them include well-known individuals and organizations, including Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Tim Cook, Steve Wozniak, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. They occasionally include executives from cryptocurrency businesses, such as Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase.
Wozniak filed a lawsuit against YouTube and Google in July 2020 for using his likeness and name to promote bitcoin giveaway hoaxes. He ultimately lost the lawsuit though. The federal law that exempts internet platforms from liability for user-posted content is in effect for YouTube and its parent company, Google LLC, the judge in the case ruled.
Hackers similarly used the British Army’s official Twitter and YouTube accounts to promote their cryptocurrency giveaway when they were compromised in July.
In an effort to fight scams, several crypto firms, including Binance and Circle, launched a crypto scam reporting platform in May to allow “anyone in the crypto economy to warn others about scams, hacks, or other fraudulent activity as they encounter it.”
