Teen Who Tracked Elon Musk's Private Jet Is Exposing Movements Of Other Billionaires
If you ever wanted to know where Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Oprah Winfrey are flying to on any given day.
The teen who was tracking Elon Musk's private jet is also watching the movements of other billionaires.
Jack Sweeney managed to find the airplane tail number for the Tesla founder and kept tabs on it through his Twitter page @ElonJet.
He's expanded his operations to include the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, and celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Drake.
The teen founded @CelebJets and also made dedicated pages for the Microsoft co-founder and former Amazon boss.
He simply shows his thousands of followers where these A-listers are going each day by using bots to collate air traffic data, which is widely available to the public.
Sweeney's actions the attention of Musk, who asked him to take the account down for a small fee.
In order to tempt the 19-year-old, he offered him $5,000. Perhaps a bit stingy coming from the world's richest man?
Musk's message allegedly stated: "Can you take this down? It is a security risk."
Sweeney replied: "Yes I can but it'll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?" to which Musk then said: "I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase."
After a bit more back and forth, Musk proceeded to offer Sweeney $5,000, to which Sweeney replied: "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."
After agreeing to think about the terms Sweeney laid out, Musk has reportedly not been back in touch.
Musk tweeted that social-media accounts tracking his movements were 'becoming a security issue', suggestively feeding into speculation surrounding this Twitter conversation.
But Sweeney told Bloomberg that it's just harmless fun.
"I knew he had a plane, you know, as a fan of SpaceX and Tesla stuff. I thought the Elon Musk's Jet bot would reveal like where he's going and what business he's doing," he said.
In an interview with Insider, the 19-year-old said that he had 'done a lot of work' on the Twitter account and felt the initial $5,000 offer wasn't enough.
He said the money didn't convince him to give up 'the fun [he has] in this, working on [the account]'. Musk later said it didn't 'feel right to pay to shut this down'.
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Stewart Perrie