BALTIMORE — A grad student in need of a new laptop lost a thousand dollars in a fake Twitter promotion.
MASN Reporter Roch Kubatko is in the business of covering the Orioles, not selling laptops, but for a few days, his Twitter feed had multiple posts about a laptop giveaway for charity. One of his followers, Tim Utzig, believed the posts were real.
“I met him in a sports journalism class at Towson University while I was an undergrad there. He came and spoke to my class and ever since then, I follow him avidly. I've been a big Orioles fan for a very, very long time,” said Tim Utzig.
Utzig is unable to watch the games. He’s a blind member of the community, so he listens to the games and follows along with Kubatko's tweets. And recently, a tweet from Kubatko’s account prompted Utzig to send him a message.
“It was kind of too good to be true, the timing. I need a MacBook for graduate school,” said Utzig. “It was a discounted price, $1,000 is what I sent for a 2023 MacBook Pro, and the proceeds would be going to charity.”
After exchanging several direct messages with Kubatko's account, Utzig received an Apple Pay request for $1,000, which he accepted.
“I trusted the source, I trusted the reporter, I trusted the platform, I trusted Twitter and paid the price,” said Utzig.
What Utzig didn't realize is that the account had been hacked. He believes he would've been tipped off had his screen reader notified him that the account was suddenly locked and there were changes in Kubatko’s bio and list of people he followed.
“Using screen readers have made gigantic leaps in the world as far as being accessible for technology and helping us use technology like everyone else, but still, as per a lot of aspects of society, we're still steps behind with certain things and this led me to being more susceptible to a scam where maybe my sighted peers wouldn't have been,” said Utzig, who was unable to cancel or dispute the transaction through Apple Pay.
WMAR-2 News reached out to Kubatko. He didn't comment on this story.
“Hackers tend to like to go to very influential people, so if they can get somebody who has a lot of trusted followers, they know they're going to get a lot of people who are going to bite the bait. It's more worthwhile for them to hack into that type of account,” said Bill Sieglein, a cybersecurity expert.
Mashable identified other influential accounts that were also hacked and pedaling MacBooks. Many of these users lost access for weeks, with an unknown number of people losing thousands.
“Once your Facebook or Instagram account is taken over, it's really hard to get that unlocked,” said Sieglein.
Kubatko regained access to his account within a few days.
Unfortunately for Utzig, he hasn’t been able to recover the money he lost. He said he needed that money for a new laptop with better screen readers and wants to warn others in the disability community to be extra vigilant and careful.
WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii reached out to Twitter to see what they're doing to better safeguard these accounts, take down scam posts, and restore hacked accounts. She received an automatic response from the press email address with a single “poop emoji.”
Sofastaii also contacted the Orioles for comment on this story. She hasn’t yet received a response.
In an email, Ronza Othman, President of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland, wrote:
"I’m not familiar with any scams that disproportionately impact people who are blind or low vision directly, but I can certainly anticipate that some of the methods for providing notification of things like locked accounts, if provided only visually and in inaccessible ways, could result in a blind or low vision person falling for a scam someone else might have enough information to avoid. This is one reason why it is so important for websites and applications to be accessible to screen readers and other assistive technology used by people with disabilities. This is also why it is so critical for the Department of Justice to promulgate its regulations on public accommodations and the Americans with Disabilities Act."
The National Federation of the Blind recently announced it would be moving its social media presence from Twitter to Mastodon.
“In light of recent events, including the laying off of Twitter’s entire accessibility team and changes to its API that have broken accessible Twitter clients used by our community, the National Federation of the Blind is realigning our social media presence. The biggest immediate change is the establishment of a new server and account on the federated social media network Mastodon,” according to a statement on their website.
“Twitter is no longer a platform we can support due to its complete lack of regard for equal access by the blind. While we do not want to abandon our supporters on Twitter and will continue to post content there, it will no longer be a primary source of our social media engagement,” said Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind.
Click here more information on how to secure your Twitter account with stronger passwords and two-factor authentication.