19-year-old college student Jack Sweeney has several different Twitter accounts. But they all have one thing in common: they follow the movements of celebrities around the world. The accounts are controlled by bots specially programmed for this purpose, which reveal when a private jet takes off and where it flies to. One of the accounts is the Tesla CEO’s jet Elon Musk dedicated.
Elon Musk fears “security risk”
The Twitter account @ElonJet is one of 15 accounts owned by Sweeney. In addition to Musk, the US student’s accounts also track Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos’ private jets. With more than 208,000 followers, the profile for entrepreneur Elon Musk is by far the most popular. But he doesn’t seem to like it at all.
According to Protocol, Musk reached out to Sweeney via private messages. “Can you remove that?” he asked. “It’s a security risk.” He also doesn’t like the idea of ”being shot by a madman.” The Tesla CEO offered the student around 5,000 US dollars to take the account offline.
But the sum did not seem enough to Sweeney. “Any chance of increasing that to $50,000?” quotes Protocol. “It would be a great support for my studies and would potentially enable me to buy a car, maybe even a Model 3.”
Tech support for multibillionaire
The student also gave the entrepreneur some assistance. He advised Musk to use a blocking program. He could use that to counteract flight tracking software. “It looks like he took that advice,” CNN quoted as saying. But he can still follow the flights himself. It’s just a little more complicated.
At the moment, however, the entrepreneur’s attention should also be primarily devoted to other things. In a recent phone call with investors, Elon Musk said Tesla had reached a “crucial milestone.” At the same time, a tumbling probe from his space company SpaceX is on a collision course with the moon.
Source: Protocol; CNN