A 19-year-old American turned down 5,000 US dollars that Elon Musk offered him for deleting a Twitter account, in which the movements of the tycoon’s private plane are published, as reported last week by various economic media in the North American country.
Jack Sweeney, a student at the University of Central Florida (UCF), now wants to use several of these bot accounts to track the aerial movements of tycoons like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. The account that publishes information about Elon Musk’s private flights is called @elonJet, and so far has 271,193 followers.
The young man estimated that his project, valued according to himself at more than 5,000 dollars, could be used, for example, not only to track millionaires, but also to provide more clues about future commercial agreements between different companies.
Contacted via private Twitter message
According to the technological media Protocol, Sweeney was contacted on November 30 by Musk through private direct messages. “Can you download this (account)? It’s a security risk,” read the initial message.
As a joke, the young man replied that he could, but that he wanted a Tesla Model 3 car in return. He also told him that he was a great admirer of his, that he had started this project at school and that his intention was never ” create a security problem.
Musk’s curiosity
The South African-born billionaire asked Sweeney how he managed to track his planes through Twitter. “How much money do you make with this Twitter account? How do you manage to track using a bot?” Musk asked.
“Unfortunately, I only make $20 a month,” confessed Sweeney, who explained to Musk that all planes can be identified with ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) data that is public: “I don’t know if you know, but all planes have ADS-B that transmit telemetry. Of course, each plane can be identified,” Sweeney replied.
“How about $5,000?”
“What should I do? I don’t like the idea of being shot by a madman,” Musk said, worried that others would know where he was going. After an exchange to try to reach an agreement, the owner of Tesla makes his first offer: “How about 5,000 dollars for this account and, in general, help me make it a little more difficult for crazy people to locate me? ”
However, despite the fact that the offer for the young man sounded “feasible”, he asked if there was any possibility of that value increasing to $50,000: “It would be a great support in college and would probably allow me to get a car, maybe even a Model 3”. Musk later replied that he was thinking about it. Sweeney thinks that Musk is really angry that the billionaire blocked all the accounts associated with the teenager.
Edited by José Ignacio Urrejola