Matthew Perry’s official Twitter account was hijacked by scammers this week who tried to solicit donations from well-meaning followers of the much-loved late actor.
The submit, which has since been faraway from Perry’s Twitter account, requested for cryptocurrency donations “to assist our mission in battling habit.”
The tweet claimed to be signed by “The Matthew Perry Basis”, a real fund arrange after the actor’s demise to battle for higher habit remedy.
Nevertheless, in a tweet, the official Matthew Perry Basis warned that the submit was bogus and advised followers to not share the fraudulent plea by way of social media, and reminded them to solely donate by way of the official web site at matthewperryfoundation.org.
Fairly how the account of Perry, well-known for his position of Chandler Bing within the TV sitcom “Pals”, managed to be hijacked by scammers stays one thing of a thriller. Prospects embrace:
- that somebody who now has management over the account was phished
- that somebody had the account’s password stolen by malware
- that Perry had made the error whereas alive of reusing the identical password on his Twitter account as elsewhere on the web (and the shared password has been uncovered via an information breach). Equally it is attainable that another person with entry to Perry’s account had made the error.
The social media accounts of celebrities are definitely a gorgeous playground for scammers. Matthew Perry’s Twitter account, as an example, continues to be adopted by greater than 1.5 million folks.
Social media managers for celebrities, dwelling or useless, ought to observe greatest practices for securing accounts, equivalent to utilizing robust, distinctive passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication.
54-year-old Perry handed away at his residence in Los Angeles in October 2023, after a well-documented wrestle with habit.
