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 publish, which has since been faraway from Perry’s Twitter account, requested for cryptocurrency donations “to assist our mission in battling dependancy.”
The tweet claimed to be signed by “The Matthew Perry Basis”, a real fund arrange after the actor’s demise to struggle for higher dependancy therapy.
Nevertheless, in a tweet, the official Matthew Perry Basis warned that the publish was bogus and advised followers to not share the fraudulent plea through social media, and reminded them to solely donate through the official web site at matthewperryfoundation.org.
Fairly how the account of Perry, well-known for his function of Chandler Bing within the TV sitcom “Associates”, managed to be hijacked by scammers stays one thing of a thriller. Â Potentialities embody:
- 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 potential that another person with entry to Perry’s account had made the error.
The social media accounts of celebrities are definitely a beautiful playground for scammers. Â Matthew Perry’s Twitter account, as an illustration, remains to be adopted by greater than 1.5 million folks.
Social media managers for celebrities, residing or useless, ought to comply with greatest practices for securing accounts, akin to utilizing robust, distinctive passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication.
54-year-old Perry handed away at his dwelling in Los Angeles in October 2023, after a well-documented battle with dependancy.
