Student rejects $5,000 from Elon Musk

Elon Musk gets off his jet (2019 in Belgium)

The Tesla boss wanted to prevent the flight movements of his private jet from being tracked.

(Photo: Imago)

Dusseldorf At the University of Florida in Orlando, Jack Sweeney is currently a minor celebrity. The 19-year-old US student reported on local television about his conversation with Elon Musk last November: “Can you please stop that? It’s a security risk,” the Tesla boss wrote in a first direct message at the time, according to Sweeney.

He was referring to Sweeney’s Twitter account, which he uses to track the billionaire’s private jet based on flight data. The student also does this with the planes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates or Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But @ElonJet is by far the most popular account he runs with more than 210,000 followers.

According to Sweeney, Musk asked him how much money he was making from the accounts. $20 a month, the teenager wrote back. Musk then offered him $5,000 to shut down the service. Sweeney asked for $50,000 – he could use that for college and maybe a Tesla Model 3.

Sweeney went on to offer the billionaire to shut down the account if Musk offered him an internship. There is no answer so far. Now the student has made the chat history public to several US media.

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Musk is flying to Germany in a few days to visit the new plant in Grünheide, near Berlin. A final approval is still pending, but the visit could coincide with speculation by observers. So it would be interesting not only for Tesla fans to know when Musk’s private jet to Europe will take off.

Bots compare data

The fact that Musk got in touch with Sweeney already shows that it’s not easy to fly undetected. The FAA tracks every aircraft. However, celebrities or others can have their data blocked. However, Sweeney cleverly circumvents the blockade.

The 15 bots used by the student retrieve flight data from so-called ADS-B transponders. They send out position data to avoid collisions and regulate air traffic. Sweeney’s computer programs learn important key data such as flight altitude or flight direction. In the next step, the bots compare this data with anonymized FAA flight plans. This is how the aircraft and the destination are identified.

Father works in the industry

Musk was not the reason for Sweeney to track planes. His father works in the aviation industry, and the American did it even as a child. In a conversation with the Tesla boss, he recommended certain blocking software – which Sweeney can bypass, however.

Musk’s complaint is not entirely unfounded. In theory, anyone can track the entrepreneur and receive it at the destination airport. “I don’t like the idea of ​​being shot by a madman,” the Tesla boss wrote to Sweeney.

The student now published the course of the conversation with calculation. Followers on his Twitter account tripled, and Uberjets hired him part-time as an application developer.

More: Tesla’s numbers are not a good sign for the German premium manufacturers

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