Skip to main content

Twitter finally realizes that financial scams don’t belong on Twitter

Yesterday, if you had wanted to perpetrate some financial scams on Twitter, you seemingly would have been allowed to, at least according to the company’s site policies.

Technically, financial scams were handled through the company’s spam-reporting tool, but they weren’t specifically called out and prohibited. That all changed on Monday, when Twitter updated its policies to explicitly spell out a ban on financial scams:

“We want Twitter to be a place where people can make human connections and find reliable information,” reads the new policy. “For this reason, you may not use Twitter’s services to deceive others into sending you money or personal financial information via scam tactics, phishing, or otherwise fraudulent or deceptive methods.”

We’re always updating our rules based on how online behaviors change. Today we're expanding our policies to prohibit financial scams.

Read more: https://t.co/ihBxbTGKk5

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) September 23, 2019

The policy then goes into specifics on what’s not allowed: “You are not allowed to create accounts, post Tweets, or send Direct Messages that solicit engagement in such fraudulent schemes.”

Seems obvious, but also apparently not, so it’s good that it’s all spelled out now.

In case you read all that and still weren’t sure if your particular financial scam is prohibited, Twitter took things a step further to spell out a few examples of fraudulent activity. Specifically:

• Relationship/trust-building scams. You may not deceive others into sending you money or personal financial information by operating a fake account or by posing as a public figure or an organization.

• Money-flipping schemes. You may not engage in “money flipping” schemes (for example, guaranteeing to send someone a large amount of money in return for a smaller initial payment via a wire transfer or prepaid debit card).

• Fraudulent discounts. You may not operate schemes which make discount offers to others wherein fulfillment of the offers is paid for using stolen credit cards and/or stolen financial credentials.

• Phishing scams. You may not pose as or imply affiliation with banks or other financial institutions to acquire others’ personal financial information. Keep in mind that other forms of phishing to obtain such information are also in violation of our platform manipulation and spam policy.

If you come across a violation of the policy you can report it to Twitter by clicking the “Report Tweet” button on the tweet in question and then selecting “It’s suspicious or spam” from the drop-down menu and then selecting the most appropriate option for how that tweet is inappropriate.

Accounts found to be violating the policy can have their accounts locked, URLs blacklisted, tweets deleted, and in “severe” cases have their accounts permanently removed.

Twitter has made several moves to improve the platform lately. The company is testing out a way to let users hide replies to their tweets in the hopes of weeding out abuse.

Emily Price
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Emily is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. Her book "Productivity Hacks: 500+ Easy Ways to Accomplish More at…
Elon Musk isn’t buying Twitter, tries to end $44 billion deal to buy the company
A digital image of Elon Musk in front of a stylized background with the Twitter logo repeating.

Elon Musk announced Friday, July 8, that he is no longer pursuing a deal to buy Twitter. The news broke via Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings on Friday afternoon.

Musk started talking about his intentions to purchase Twitter earlier this year, eventually striking a deal with Twitter in April to purchase the social media website for around $44 billion. Since then, however, Musk has fallen strangely quiet about the subject. While his Twitter profile used to be filled with grand ideas for major Twitter changes and shake-ups, he's barely mentioned the deal over the past month.

Read more
Using Google Keep on a Samsung S21? Don’t install One UI 4
The rear panel of the Samsung Galaxy S21 showing its triple cameras.

Samsung has been busy rolling out Android 12 updates to a bunch of smartphones over the past few weeks. While the rollout has been largely bug-free, a specific subset of Samsung users has encountered a rather peculiar issue. Apparently, the move to Android 12 and One UI 4.0 seems to have caused an inadvertent bug with Google’s popular note-taking app Google Keep on select Samsung smartphones.

According to the user who first reported this problem, he noticed the issue after finding that an auto-numbered list on his Google Keep app behaving strangely. Whenever he tried to navigate through the list by scrolling, the bug caused extra numbers to be automatically added. The problem also manifests whenever users try to add newer items to the list. The user in question was using a Samsung Galaxy S21+.

Read more
T-Mobile says Scam Shield has blocked 21 billion scam calls in 2021
woman on phone.

T-Mobile's scam call screening service, Scam Shield, was officially launched in July 2020, and in its first full year of operation, Scam Shield has blocked a mind-boggling 21 billion scam calls, according to T-Mobile’s 2021 Scam and Robocall Report.
Scam callers take holidays, weekends off
The report offers some insights into the state of the scam call business. Social Security phishing scams, once the most common type of scam call, comprised only 11% of scam call volume. Fake vehicle warranty renewals were the most common type, accounting for 51% of all scam calls. These scams often include information about your vehicle to make them seem more legitimate, according to a Federal Communications Commission consumer report.

If scam calls seem like they’re out of control, the time of year may have something to do with that. According to T-Mobile, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas have the highest volume of scam calls, but call volume drops sharply after December 23. In addition to taking holidays, scam callers also take weekends off, leading to an 85% drop in call volume.

Read more