By Evan Spicer
Director of Cryptocurrency Investigations
MyChargeBack
A new scam is targeting the fans of Elon Musk’s latest project, X, a revolutionary platform that aims to connect humans and machines. The scam promises to give away $25 million worth of X tokens to anyone who sends a small amount of cryptocurrency to a specified address. However, the giveaway is fake and the scammers are stealing the funds from unsuspecting victims.
How can you protect yourself from scams like this?
Here are some tips from the security researchers at Zengo, who published a detailed report on their blog.
- Always check the domain name and the SSL certificate of any website you visit. The official X website is x.com and has a green padlock icon in the address bar. The fake websites use a slightly different domain name, such as x.network or xnet.work, and may have a red warning sign or no padlock at all.
- What is an SSL certificate? An SSL certificate is a data file hosted in a website’s origin server. SSL certificates make SSL/TLS encryption possible, and they contain the website’s public key and the website’s identity, along with related information. Devices attempting to communicate with the origin server will reference this file to obtain the public key and verify the server’s identity. The private key is kept secret and secure.
- Never click on any links that claim to offer free X tokens or any other cryptocurrency. These links may lead you to phishing websites that try to steal your personal information or infect your device with malware.
- Never send money to anyone you don’t know or trust. No legitimate giveaway or project will ask you to send money in order to verify your identity or claim your reward. As the adage goes, if something sounds too good to be true it probably is.
- Do your own research before investing in any project or token. Don’t rely on social media posts, testimonials, or advertisements that may be fake or misleading. Look for official sources, such as the project’s website, whitepaper, roadmap, team, and partners.
And if you do your research you will find that X is a legitimate project that was announced by Elon Musk in July 2021. It is described as “an open AI ecosystem that enables anyone to create, share, and monetize AI applications at scale.” X aims to use neural interfaces and blockchain technology to create a decentralized network of human-machine collaboration. X has not launched yet and its token sale date has not been announced.
