The black market for blue checks
by Shubham Agarwal from The Verge - All Posts on (#64VQ3)
Vincent Kilbride / The Verge On August 15th, an alarming email popped up in the inbox of Diana Pearl, a New York-based news editor. Someone in Moscow had logged into her verified Twitter account, it said. Pearl was familiar with the email content's theme as it resembled previous automated correspondence from Twitter - featuring a minimal white background, black text, and blue links.
Fearing her account's safety, Pearl clicked the link inside the email that supposedly would instantly let her secure her account and entered her existing password on the following webpage to update it.
Moments later, a message arrived in a Telegram group. All it contained was a screenshot of Pearl's Twitter profile and a link. Three hours later, the admin texted, Sold."
Pearl had...