CBS uses the real Steve Wozniak -- and Disney's -- to help fight bitcoin fraudsters
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has taken to CBS to complain about fake videos of him purportedly backing bitcoin -- and in the video, CBS inadvertently showed a fake version of him, that's hosted at a Disney park.
Steve Wozniak, maybe? Credit: CBS, or whoever's picture they used that was taken at EPCOT
Woz has been here before -- in 2020, he attempted to sue YouTube over fake cryptocurrency giveaways that used his likeness. But then in 2021, he lost the case, and now he's back presenting his story as a public service announcement.
Speaking on CBS, he and his wife Janet Hill outlined how such scams are still prevalent. He also recounted how people fully believed he was involved in the schemes.
"I got an email on our web server that said, 'When are you gonna send me my money?'" said Hill. "And I wrote back, and I said, 'What are you talking about?' And they had actually taken video of Woz talking about Bitcoin."
"And then they put a nice frame around it with a Bitcoin address," she continued, "[saying] that if you sent him any amount of Bitcoin, he would send you double that back."
"Some people said they lost their life savings," added Woz, who broadly says that technology was good before the internet. "Well, yeah, until the internet came, and it offered new business models, you know, ways to have power over other people and control a lot of customers," he said.
Woz also talked about the failed lawsuit, saying that, "We never got to YouTube. Our lawyer has gotten to their lawyer, that's all."
This story is not new, although since such scam videos continue seemingly unabated, it remains important that people be warned against them. It's not clear how effective a warning can be, since the too-good-to-be-true litmus test seemingly doesn't stop everyone.
But presenting the story on CBS is a help to getting the word out to people who do not follow technology news and so, perhaps, may be more vulnerable.
EPCOT Woz
However, there is also irony to this particular report as CBS apparently unwittingly illustrated its story about fake Woz photos -- with a fake Woz photo. The lead image to this story is a frame capture from the video, at 56 seconds in.
Amongst many genuine images of the Apple co-founder, CBS had a shot of him seemingly working in his garage in the 1970s. However, the shot is really of an animatronic figure in Spaceship Earth, the showcase ride at EPCOT at Walt Disney World in Florida.
AppleInsider's own photo of the EPCOT "Steve Wozniak" figure shown by CBS as if it were really him
This was taken by us in July 2022.
Spaceship Earth opened with EPCOT in 1982 without the scene in question. The Steve Jobs / Steve Wozniak mash-up figure near the peak of the ride and just before the view of earth from orbit was added in 1994. It was updated in 2007 to more resemble Wozniak.
Still, though, not Wozniak.
Since officially leaving Apple in 1985, Woz has run music festivals, and more recently also backed a technology university -- or, according to a 2021 lawsuit against him, two such universities.
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