Elon Musk drops price of X gold checks amid rampant crypto scams

Enlarge (credit: ALAIN JOCARD / Contributor | AFP)

There's currently a surge in cryptocurrency and phishing scams proliferating on X (formerly Twitter)—hiding under the guise of gold and gray checkmarks intended to mark "Verified Organizations," reports have warned this week.

These scams seem to mostly commandeer dormant X accounts purchased online through dark web marketplaces, according to a whitepaper released by the digital threat monitoring platform CloudSEK. But the scams have also targeted high-profile X users who claim that they had enhanced security measures in place to protect against these hacks.

This suggests that X scammers are growing more sophisticated at a time when X has launched an effort to sell even more gold checks at lower prices through a basic tier announced this week.