Twitter will lock your account if you change your display name to Elon Musk

Twitter will lock your account if you change your display name to Elon Musk

Twitter has implemented a new method for combating cryptocurrency scammers: it now automatically locks unverified accounts that change their display name to Elon Musk. If you have a non-verified account that is not associated with a phone number, changing your display name to that of the SpaceX and Tesla CEO will result in an immediate lock out. Twitter will then ask you to pass a CAPTCHA test, as well as provide a phone number, to regain access.

“As part of our continuing efforts to combat spam and malicious activity on our service, we’re testing new measures to challenge accounts that use terms commonly associated with spam campaigns. We are continually refining these detections based on changes in spammy activity,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement given to The Verge. The company declined to comment on whether the measure has been put in place for any other public figure’s Twitter account.

You can confirm the authenticity of your account and then keep your display name as Elon Musk. That’s because the measure is designed to combat the innumerable bots on Twitter that are imitating Musk’s (very active) Twitter profile to scam unknowing users in replies to his tweets.


Often, the scams are easy to spot to those fluent in online fraud, but they’re designed to fool the unwary. Usually, an account with a random-sounding handle but an “Elon Musk” display name and photo will typically show up as a reply to one of Musk’s real tweets, making the scam tweet look like a threaded reply. The tweets often take the same formulation: users are offered a rare chance to get in on the ground floor of a new type of blockchain technology, and all they have to do to get rich quick is fork over some cash in exchange for tokens of a new cryptocurrency they’ve never heard of. (Sometimes, the scams take the form of a Tesla giveaway.)


Given all the hype around blockchain technology and the astronomical rise in Bitcoin prices last year, it’s easy to see how Musk-loving fans who think they’re being gifted a chance at getting rich might fall prey to such a scam. Musk himself even called out the sophistication of the crypto scammers targeting his profile earlier this month:

Twitter said in March that it would try to reduce the number of crypto scams on its platform. At the time, Twitter said it was “implementing a number of signals to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner.” That was mostly in response to vocal criticism from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who even today still has the phrase “Not giving away ETH” in his display name due to how frequently he too was being targeted by scammers.

But the problem seemed only to intensify. Scam tweets regularly began popping up underneath Musk’s replies, and news organizations even began embedding the scam tweets in stories that mistakenly referenced the giveaways and coin sales as authentic.

Twitter says it’s still working on additional solutions to the problem, but it seems as if scammers are creating bot accounts faster than the company can actively lock them out. In late June, Twitter announced it had acquired a cybersecurity startup called Smyte that would help it “address challenges in safety, spam and security more quickly and effectively.”

“As part of our commitment to serve the public conversation, we’re continuing to fight spam and other malicious behaviors on our service,” Twitter said in a separate statement given to The Verge earlier this week regarding the resilience of crypto scammers. “This is an evolving challenge. As such, we’re rapidly developing our response to be more agile and effective in detecting these behaviors and enforcing our policies — particularly as it relates to deceptive cryptocurrency accounts in violation of our spam rules.

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Feature phone growth crosses smartphone’s

Feature phone growth crosses smartphone’s

According to the latest Counterpoint Research data, feature phones witnessed a 21 per cent growth year-on-year (y-o-y) during the April-June quarter in 2018 compared with the smartphone’s 18 per cent.

By: ENS Economic Bureau | New Delhi |

Updated: July 25, 2018 1:30:45 am

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During the January-March quarter, Jio controlled almost 36 per cent of the country’s feature phone market, which rose to 47 per cent in the April-June quarter. (Representational Image)

Reliance Jio’s aggressive pricing and promotions of its 4G feature phone has resulted in growth in this segment outpacing that of the smartphone for two consecutive quarters. According to the latest Counterpoint Research data, feature phones witnessed a 21 per cent growth year-on-year (y-o-y) during the April-June quarter in 2018 compared with the smartphone’s 18 per cent.

During the January-March quarter this calendar, the agency said the market was driven by the feature phone segment, which doubled in Q12018 due to strong shipments of Jio Phone, while the smartphone market remained flat y-o-y. During the January-March quarter, Jio controlled almost 36 per cent of the country’s feature phone market, which rose to 47 per cent in the April-June quarter.

Except Jio, the top four feature phone brands — Samsung, Nokia, Itel and Lava —registered growth in single digits for the last two quarters in the 2018 calendar year, Counterpoint data show. The demand for Jio Phone gathered pace during during January with the company introducing a cheaper data plan, Rs 49 per month that offers free calls and 1GB of 4G data per month. —FE.

Copied From Indian Express .

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How to Recover Data From a Corrupt ZIP File

How to Recover Data From a Corrupt ZIP File

As what may be the most common and convenient way to store and send multiple files, the ZIP file format is used by essentially everyone online. That being the case, there's a good chance you'll eventually come across one that has been corrupted, not least because only a single corrupt bit in one file out of dozens inside the ZIP could prevent your file archiver from opening or extracting its contents.

Corrupt files can result from a variety of issues including bad drive sectors, malware, an incomplete download or transfer such as during a drop in your connection, or any other sudden interruption like a power failure or an improper shut down while working with the ZIP file.

A corrupt ZIP file may open for you anyway, but some of the original files might be missing and attempting to open damaged ZIPs typically causes Windows to prompt with the following error:

"Windows cannot open the folder. The Compressed (zipped) Folder 'C:\Users\TechSpot\Desktop\Wallpaper Collection Corrupt.zip' is invalid"

We recreated a corrupt ZIP file by archiving an old collection of wallpapers and deleting parts of the file's code using a hex editor (Notepad++). In doing so, our collection dropped from nine images to one and we couldn't actually open the file even though it was still being displayed in the file explorer.

Your rate of success recovering anything from an archive will vary depending on the tool you use, the contents of your ZIP and the degree to which it has been corrupted.

Starting with the software that you are most likely to have installed already, WinRAR provides a built-in repair tool for damaged ZIP files. Open the file, then go to Tools > Repair archive. WinRAR managed to recover seven out of the nine files from our damaged archive. However, the software is only free for 40 days, after which a license to continue using the software will cost you about $30.

WinZip and 7-Zip don't seem to have integrated repair tools but the companies do offer good information pages about corrupt ZIP files.

More tools to repair corrupt ZIP files

DiskInternals Zip Repair - Free to download, it managed to recover eight out of the nine original files. It's dedicated to repairing zip files so it has less clutter to navigate than WinRAR and it launches with a wizard-style prompt instead of you having to go through any menus.

Zip2Fix - Tied for first place recommendation. Its spartan interface has even less clicks involved than DiskInternals: you open the corrupt ZIP and the software automatically begins its process and outputs any recovered files to the source directory without asking or prompting about anything. It worked as well as DiskInternals, recovering eight of the nine files (and again, that's one better than WinRAR).

As a final freebie mention, Object Fix Zip has a similar interface to DiskInternals Zip Repair but for some reason it didn't manage to recover any of the images from our test ZIP, making it difficult to recommend before DiskInternals or Zip2Fix, or even WinRAR.

Likewise, there are also many licensed utilities dedicated to recovering files from broken archive files and in our testing all of them provided about the same level of service as the freeware solutions mentioned above except that they don't let you extract the files without paying, though they do at least show you the files that are available for recovery.

DataNumen Archive Repair (formerly Advanced Archive Repair) claimed to have recovered eight of the nine files with 100% accuracy but again the freeware version doesn't provide access to the files. Instead, they are locked behind a $49.95 license fee for DataNumen Zip Repair or as much as $200+ for DataNumen Archive Repair, which supports additional file types such as Unix TAR and Windows CAB archives.

That said, its interface seems less polished than DiskInternals or Zip2Fix, which are free and had the same success rate. Similarly, Yodot ZIP Repair has a click-heavy interface compared to DiskInternals Zip Repair and locks your files behind a $30-$200 paywall after recovering them, as do Aryson Zip Repair Software ($24) Zip Recovery Toolbox ($27+).

Bonus...

The only other reason that you may not be able to open a ZIP file is because of a forgotten password. It's worth mentioning that although ZIP Recovery Toolbox and some of the other utilities mentioned above will process password-protected files, they'll still require you to provide the password to complete the recovery.

However, if you've forgotten your password, there are also utilities specifically for that issue. iSeePassword comes to mind as a utility we've tested previously for recovering Windows passwords and for about $30 the company offers a tool that supports archive, office as well as many other file types.

This blog is copied from Techspot .

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