Elon Musk offers teen $5K to delete Twitter account tracking his private jet

The teenager, Sweeney, received a direct message from Elon Musk asking to delete his Twitter account

January 30, 2022

Elon Musk offers teen $5K to stop tracking his private jet location

The Space X CEO and the richest man Elon Musk offered to pay a tech-savvy teenager $5K to delete his Twitter account tracking Musk’s private jet due to concerns about his personal safety.

The teenager, Sweeney, received a direct message from Elon Musk asking to delete his Twitter account.

Sweeny tweeted, “Landed in Austin, Texas, US.”

Landed in Austin, Texas, US. pic.twitter.com/4l7tKiUspp

— Elon Musk’s Jet (@ElonJet) January 26, 2022

Musk, who is an avid Twitter user, reached out to Sweeney asking him:

Musk: “Ok, how about $5k for this account and generally helping make it slightly harder for crazy people to track me?”
Sweeney: “Sounds doable, account and all my help. Any chance to up that to $50k? It would be great support in college and would possibly allow me to get a car maybe even a Model 3. Would love to help you out.”

Since June 2020, 19-year-old college student Jack Sweeney has been running a Twitter account with the handle @ElonJet. This Twitter account has posted the whereabouts of Musk’s jet, using public ADS-B data. While Musk’s jet is blocked in the FAA database that many tracking sites use, it’s still visible with ADS-B data, but the process of tracking does require a bit of work.

Earlier, in mid-January, when a Tesla investor posted about a planned flight for Musk, the billionaire wasn’t happy, saying “yeah, unfortunately, this is becoming a security issue.”