Scammers seem to have wasted no time since the launch of Meta's new app, and several high-profile Crypto Twitter users were already warning users about fake accounts on Threads.
Threads launched on July 5 and the following days saw registrations grow to over 98 million. There's still time for Twitter to reach its estimated 450 million users.
However, over the last few days, multiple Crypto Twitter figures have already highlighted fake accounts on Threads impersonating others or themselves.
On July 8, decentralized finance platform Wombex Finance tweeted an image of a Threads account impersonating itself — warning it could be a scammer since the project is not on the platform.
Nonfungible token (NFT) influencer Leonidas tweeted a similar warning to his 93,000 followers the day before, saying that theirs and other "major NFT accounts" were being impersonated by scammers on Threads. Leonidas said that they opened an account on Threads to combat imitators.
Jeffrey Huang, known as Machi Big Brother on Twitter, tweeted his Threads profile on July 6, with one user noting that there was a Threads account impersonating his Twitter persona.
So far, the Thread accounts mentioned have refrained from sharing any scam or phishing links, most of which post crypto-related content.
Twitter has been a popular channel for crypto phishing scammers for years, with a common tactic involving hacking the Twitter accounts of public figures and businesses and posting malicious links.
Such connections often attempt to trick unwitting targets into sharing crypto exchange logins, a crypto wallet seed phrase, or connecting a wallet to a crypto-consuming smart contract.
In the first half of this year, $108 million worth of crypto was stolen in such phishing scams, according to a report by Web3 security firm Beosin.