A 19-year-old US teenager named Jack Sweeney said he recently received a private offer from Tesla boss Elon Musk.
As the young man told the website Protocol, the billionaire offered him a $5000 reward. In return, Sweeney should shut down a flight tracker he operates on Twitter — an account called ElonJet — that publicly shares flight information from Musk’s private jet because it poses a “security threat.”
However, the teenager sensed a great opportunity and was not put off. After telling Musk that while the data he published was hard to find, it was still legally publicly available, he made a counteroffer.
If the billionaire raises the offer to $50,000, he would consider shutdown the Twitter bot. Sweeney justified his request with the fact that he could use the money to pay for college and maybe even afford a Tesla Model 3.
Musk, who is said to have expressed shock that his flight details were publicly available, responded that he would consider the proposal, according to Sweeney.
According to the report, there has been no further feedback since then, and the Twitter account is still online.
According to the report, Sweeney owns 15 of these Twitter accounts on different aeroplanes, including those of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. All are based on a bot he developed himself, which automatically processes and prepares publicly available flight data. The account for Elon Musk’s private jet is the most successful, with around 116,000 followers.
