ChainCatcher reported that according to The Block, researchers at San Diego State University developed a fully automatic fraud detection system GiveawayScamHunter. The system found that 87,617 accounts on the X platform (formerly Twitter) created 95,111 fraud lists between June 2022 and June 2023.

It is reported that the Twitter Lists feature effectively organizes the fans, people you care about, tags and interests that users follow to help them focus on important things. Users can customize, organize and prioritize the tweets they see in their timeline. Users can add other users to lists without permission, and the only way to remove themselves from the list is to block the creator, which provides opportunities for scammers.

According to a research paper published on August 10, “over 365 victims were targeted by free cryptocurrency scams, resulting in an estimated $870,000 in financial losses,” and the problem has yet to be fully resolved.

The team concluded that despite reporting the results and account information to Platform X, nearly 44% of the accounts posting spam were still active at the time of writing.