San Diego State University researchers developed a fully automated scam detection system — dubbed GiveawayScamHunter — that uncovered 95,111 scam lists created from 87,617 accounts on X (formerly Twitter) between June 2022 and June 2023.

Twitter Lists are a function of the social media platform that lets users customize, organize and prioritize the posts they see in their timelines. Users may add other users to lists without permission, and the only way to remove oneself from a list is to block the creator — a dynamic that creates a vector for scams.

According to a research paper published on Aug 10, "over 365 victims have been attacked by the [free cryptocurrency giveaway] scam, resulting in an estimated financial loss of $870,000" — and the problem hasn't been entirely solved. The …