Staring down a 90-minute delay to an evening flight from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, to New York City’s JFK last weekend, I did something I’ve done many times before. I tweeted at the airline to ask what was causing the delay.
Within a few minutes, I’d had my query answered by the official X (formerly Twitter) account of JetBlue, but I’d also been inundated with likes, follows, and replies from nearly 20 accounts—each of which boasted the same profile photo and bio as the official account, and handles with some variation on @Jetblue.
In their replies, the accounts claimed to be sending tweets from JetBlue employees, and asked for me to DM them my WhatsApp number to resolve the issue. Turns out, what I experienced is a relatively new but increasingly common grift happening on X, seemingly thanks to the site’s fragmented verification process.
Earlier this month, Jason Rabinowitz—an aviation enthusiast who goes by @AirlineFlyer on social media and cohosts the AvTalk podcast from flight-tracking site FlightRadar24—noticed an uptick in bots replying to people who were tweeting at airlines for flight updates and customer service—with Air Canada among the common airlines whose customers ended up getting peppered with tweets. As someone who’s followed the airline industry for the past decade, Rabinowitz says the uptick in bot replies is unprecedented.
“Before the changes to the verification system on Twitter, there were definitely bots trying to scam people, but never really in a concerted, coordinated, targeted way like we’re seeing [now],” Rabinowitz says.
Under the platform’s previous verification system, Twitter would confirm that an account belonged to the business in question before bestowing a verification badge, but Elon Musk overhauled the process after taking over the site in 2022.
“It is absolutely overwhelming at this point,” Rabinowitz adds.
