Police are urging social media users to use extra security measures after official Twitter accounts with thousands of followers were hacked in an Elon Musk 'impersonator' scam.

The accounts for retailer Matalan, film studio Pathe UK and Swansea City Ladies football club were all hacked in the scam. They are all verified, where a small blue tick next to their name means they are an official page.

The scammers compromised these verified accounts and changed the display name to 'Elon Musk' in a bid to abuse the trust of other Twitter users. "Elon" said that if Bitcoin account holders paid money into his crypto-wallet, he would pay back ten times the amount they put in.

A spokesman for Dorset Police's Cyber Crime Unit said: "As rich as he is, Elon isn't giving away a small fortune in cryptocurrency.

"As I'm sure you can probably guess, anyone who pays up never sees their money again and at the time of writing, the wallet involved in at least one of these operations holds around £125,000 worth of Bitcoin."

Police say this kind of account takeover can be avoided by turning on two factor authentication which requires users to enter a special code when they log into a new computer, phone or tablet. Anyone not holding that device cannot log in, meaning cybercriminals won't be able to access the account.

Find out more at www.turnon2fa.com