Elon Musk reached out to a 19-year-old through Twitter direct messages last fall and asked him to stop tracking his private flights, according to a report from Protocol.
The Twitter account @ElonJet has nearly 250,000 followers, and has been tracking Musk's private jet with a bot using public data from the Federal Aviation Administration since June 2020.
The account provides regular updates on the location of the jet, and is run by Jack Sweeney, a freshman at the University of Central Florida.
Sweeney sent screenshots of his direct messages with Musk to USA Today. Musk's first message said, "Can you take this down? It is a security risk."
The college freshman then explained the account is something he's dedicated a lot of time towards and never intended for it to become a security risk. Sweeney even joked that he would exchange it for a Tesla Model 3 car -- the 2022 version starts at $46,690.
Musk then asked Sweeney how he is able to pull of running the account how much it would cost to delete the account.
After exchanging messages, Musk offered $5,000, but Sweeney countered with $50,000 to help pay for school and a car.
When asked about messaging with Musk, the 19-year-old said it was "Cool, but kinda scary at first."
Musk eventually said in the messages that it "Doesn't feel right to pay to shut this down." He then gave Sweeney advice to accept offers of Bitcoin that he's received from others pushing to keep the account instead of selling it.
The account is still active, and according to it's last tweet on Jan. 30 at 8:43 p.m., Elon Musk's private jet landed near Harlingen, Texas safely after a two hour and 16 minute flight.
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