Despite only serving as a teaser recently, Elon Musk’s Xmail is causing a stir in the tech world.
The news comes after Musk endorsed a controversial idea that he feels can rival Google’s Gmail without a second thought. At first, the idea seemed creative but now experts think it could serve as a major security threat to billions of people around the globe.
It seems to be a similar notion by Musk who shared the idea once before but again, not everyone took him seriously now the tech billionaire just added it to his ‘to-do’ list and we think he means business.
Now wrapping your head around the idea that X has just 600M users while Gmail controls more than a third of the global population - how big of a threat could it really be?
Well, X still reigns supreme in terms of getting the most attention online in terms of social media platforms. Gmail on the other hand is free of cost and therefore the most popular service globally. So can this give rise to an ideal phishing storm? As per experts, the answer is yes.
The major difference here is that AI phishing comes to a point where you cannot decipher fact from fiction. It’s so great at rolling out scam messages but also comes at a cheap cost. This means it’s a top choice for cybercriminals in the world of business.
People keep getting scammed out of their respective accounts due to their stolen credentials and then cash. Gmail users are major targets due to them being most interested and therefore might attempt to sign up early if an Xmail beta rolls out. They might be enticed with tools to make the switch to non-existent services by adding Gmail login credentials for message transfers. So while Xmail is not prevalent now, the threat linked to phishing is.
As far as what we can expect is concerned, well, Musk did drop a few hints on how he wants it to be simple in terms of direct message interfaces. He’s thinking more along the lines of direct plain text inboxes. There will not be any room for messy formatting or threads which makes us think that E2E encryption would also be prevalent for the best security. Again, only time can tell.
Image: DIW-Aigen
Read next: UK’s Online Safety Regulator Says Social Media Apps Need To Do A Lot Of Work
The news comes after Musk endorsed a controversial idea that he feels can rival Google’s Gmail without a second thought. At first, the idea seemed creative but now experts think it could serve as a major security threat to billions of people around the globe.
It seems to be a similar notion by Musk who shared the idea once before but again, not everyone took him seriously now the tech billionaire just added it to his ‘to-do’ list and we think he means business.
Now wrapping your head around the idea that X has just 600M users while Gmail controls more than a third of the global population - how big of a threat could it really be?
Well, X still reigns supreme in terms of getting the most attention online in terms of social media platforms. Gmail on the other hand is free of cost and therefore the most popular service globally. So can this give rise to an ideal phishing storm? As per experts, the answer is yes.
The major difference here is that AI phishing comes to a point where you cannot decipher fact from fiction. It’s so great at rolling out scam messages but also comes at a cheap cost. This means it’s a top choice for cybercriminals in the world of business.
People keep getting scammed out of their respective accounts due to their stolen credentials and then cash. Gmail users are major targets due to them being most interested and therefore might attempt to sign up early if an Xmail beta rolls out. They might be enticed with tools to make the switch to non-existent services by adding Gmail login credentials for message transfers. So while Xmail is not prevalent now, the threat linked to phishing is.
As far as what we can expect is concerned, well, Musk did drop a few hints on how he wants it to be simple in terms of direct message interfaces. He’s thinking more along the lines of direct plain text inboxes. There will not be any room for messy formatting or threads which makes us think that E2E encryption would also be prevalent for the best security. Again, only time can tell.
Read next: UK’s Online Safety Regulator Says Social Media Apps Need To Do A Lot Of Work
