For celebrities, facing stalkers is not uncommon; it is often considered “an everyday occurrence.” Elon Musk is no exception, as he has been targeted by a 19-year-old named Jack Sweeney, who created a Twitter account called Elon Musk’s Jet specifically to track the movements of Musk’s private jet.
According to Protocol, this Twitter account provides such accurate updates that Elon Musk had to reach out to Jack and offered him $5,000 to “leave him alone.”
The hacker created a Twitter account to track Elon Musk’s flight path.
The Elon Musk’s Jet Twitter account updates information about Tesla’s CEO flight path so accurately that Musk himself became alarmed.
In a conversation with Protocol, Jack revealed that he received an offer from Tesla’s CEO in the fall of 2021: “Can you deactivate this account? It poses a security risk!” Jack also playfully responded, “Sure, but it would probably take a Model 3 for me to do that.” Elon Musk then got angry and replied quite harshly: “Don’t even think about ‘playing’ me, you jerk.”
After some back-and-forth exchanges, the world’s richest billionaire decided to make a $5,000 offer as mentioned above. However, Jack was still not satisfied and wanted to receive ten times that amount: “Can you raise it to $50,000, uncle? That amount would really help me with my college tuition, and I might even be able to buy a car, maybe even a Model 3.”
It seems the $5,000 offer did not satisfy Jack.
The most recent update was on January 27, showing that Elon’s plane had landed in Austin, Texas, and it appears that the two parties have yet to agree on a price to deactivate this Twitter account.
Elon Musk stated that he would consider it further, but since then, he has not contacted Jack again.
According to a Twitter post, Jack has been tracking Elon Musk’s private jet N628TS since June 2020 using a bot that utilizes publicly available ADS-B data. He also clarified that he was only tracking this aircraft and was not certain about who was on board. Upon hearing Jack’s clever explanation of how Elon Musk’s Jet operates, the billionaire remarked: “Air traffic control is still too rudimentary.”
Recently, Protocol revealed that last Wednesday (January 19), Jack proactively messaged Elon to discuss the Twitter account again. He expressed his desire to intern at one of Musk’s companies (most likely Tesla) instead of receiving cash, but has yet to receive an official response.
