It didn’t take long for Microsoft to scrap Clippy, its mostly useless virtual assistant from the late ‘90s. He still achieved a level of Internet fame and some scammers recently tried to cash in on that nostalgia. First they created a Clippy account on X titled ClippyMSFTCo promoting a fraudulent Clippy memecoin and posted asking Microsoft “How many likes to bring Clippy back?” Then, they hacked Microsoft’s official X account and retweeted said post. Microsoft’s account has 13 million followers.
An apology post then appeared on Microsoft’s account: “We are aware of a cryptocurrency token being promoted in connection with $MSFT stock, including the unauthorized use of the Clippy brand and Microsoft-related intellectual property.” It turned out this was also a fake posted by the scammers. The real Microsoft eventually secured its account and deleted the fake posts, and X has deleted the account that first promoted the memecoin scam.