The world’s richest human being tried to pay a teen to stop tracking the location of his private jet and tweeting about it. The teen appears to have rebuffed the billionaire – perhaps holding out for a better offer.
The Twitter account @ElonJet has become part of the zeitgeist as thousands of people follow the account which shares the location of Elon Musk’s private jet as he flits around the world.
The account, run by 19-year-old college student Jeff Sweeney, leverages publicly available FAA data to share the various landing spots of the jet, according to a report from USA Today.
Sweeney, a college student from Florida, shared that Musk had contacted him with a request he stop tracking his location and an offer of $5,000 to go quietly into the dark. Sweeney, however, countered with an extra zero, instead asking for $50,000 or a Tesla 3 – the last part apparently a half-joke.
The account has nearly 100,000 followers and has only gained in popularity. Musk, for his part, and rightfully so, feels it’s a security risk.
However, with the data publicly available it’s unclear if the young man is committing a crime or is something that can actually be stopped, despite Musk’s protestations.
Even if Sweeney had taken the sum of money, there’s really nothing to stop others from doing the same thing and Musk would be in an infinite loop of paltry payouts. Effectively, Musk would be held hostage by the web. Hopefully, at least he’d pay them dogecoin.
Perhaps Musk would be better served to direct his considerable influence towards Twitter in hopes they will restrict this sort of information from being shared on the platform.
How about our readers – what are your thoughts on the account? Is Musk entitled to some modicum of security here? Was $5k a paltry sum? Too much? Weigh in with your comments, below!
See original report here.
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7 comments
If the world’s most financially selfish man gave one penny to one person once in his life as charity, maybe he’d gain more support. Imagine if he gave several billion (small part of his fortune) to some california state or texas state universities how many thousands of people in need could go to college. But he’s a douche.
Popular figures have to deal with this invasion of privacy. It’s par for the course. Elon is pretty interesting. I was one of the first ones that bought the Model S when it first came out. I bought the one with the back 3rd row (which my kids never used much). The first time, it had this bad safety defect where a kid could easily unlatch the seat and they would fly forward.
I remember emailing Elon back then and he had the engineers figure out a fix and had me bring in my car the following day after I emailed him. Very interesting guy.
One things for sure, is that kid cant handle the 1099-Misc that will follow, whether its $5K or the value of the Tesla.
What’s that supposed to mean?
TAXES …the kid would have to pay the tax on the value of the car
Sounds like stalking to me.
Ask FCC has any other ideas as to how to Putnams stop to the blackmail.