Elon Musk-owned X is planning strict measures to curb the platform misuse by crypto scammers. In the coming weeks, X will be rolling out a security feature that will tighten the verification requirements for accounts posting crypto related content.
The development was announced this week by Nikita Bier, the head of product at X. Bier revealed that soon, X will start auto-locking accounts that have posted a crypto-related tweet for the first time in the history of being created.
Once the auto-lock would execute, X plans to ask the account user to undergo a detailed verification in order to break free from the auto-lock.
This upcoming upgrade to X has been decided after it observed a rise in phishing and impersonation scams attacks targeting crypto users via the platforms. A swarm of fraudsters have made the social networking platform a hotspot of cybercrime, identifying potential victims and executing an array of scams including ones including impersonation, romance, and promises of high-returns on promoted investments.
In a recent case, Benjamin White, the founder of a free-to-play sports prediction gaming platform called Predictfully became victim to a phishing scam via X.
In a detailed post, White said he received an email from “X” through an email, citing copyright violations on two of his posts. The email which White highlighted, looked totally legitimate asked him to appeal the finding.
“I use that platform every day. I know what it looks like. So I trusted what I was seeing. I logged in. What I didn’t realise at the time is that I wasn’t securing my account. I was handing over the final piece of information needed for someone else to access it,” White said.
Within 30 seconds of White logging in, his password was updated and his address was replaced. He was locked out of his account and his two-factor authentication was reset.
“A few minutes later, my account was being used to post scam content. Tokens, links, pages designed to look like mine. The kind of thing you see and assume would never come from you,” the Predictfully honcho explained.
White rushed to raise a complaint to the support team of X, alerting of this impersonating scam. In panic he registered the complaint twice.
“Between those two requests, there were over 1,300 additional cases logged,” he alarmingly posted.
Bier responded to White’s post acknowledging that X is aware of such scams being pushed through thee platform, that is used by millions worldwide.
The official said once the new crypto security feature could “kill 99 percent of the incentive, especially since Google isn’t doing shit to stop the phishing emails.”
As of now, Bier has not disclosed a specific timeline by which this feature could be rolled out. He also did not explain the consequences for accounts that fail to clear the updated verifications.
X users have been checking the authenticity of suspicious crypto-related posts through Grok.
Earlier in January, X had also started imposing bans on post-to-earn crypto apps amid rising fears of scams.