Facebook verifies the fanpage as a real Elon Musk

The account “ElonMuskoffici” had a white confirmation tick on a blue background, it was actually a Facebook fan page from Egypt, as reported by the US tech portal The Verge. The page, which was still online on Tuesday morning, was blocked by Facebook on Tuesday lunchtime.

The operators of the Facebook page had apparently tried to implement a scam, which so far has mainly been found on Twitter. In the networks, scammers pretend to be Elon Musk, who is known as a supporter of crypto currencies such as Bitcoin or Dogecoin. In the posts, the fake Tesla bosses urge users to send Bitcoins to a specific address in order to get double the amount back. The victims go away empty-handed in the Bitcoin lottery and will not see their digital money again.

The falsely verified Facebook page had over 150,000 followers before it was from Facebook has been blocked. Research in the Internet archive “Waybackmachine” shows that Facebook had previously verified a fake Elon Musk with a confirmation tick (ElonMuskofficia1).

Facebook verification requires account owners to provide proof of identity, such as a driver’s license or passport. Sometimes scammers manage to rename already verified pages and thus assume a new identity without Facebook noticing and revoking the original verification. dpa