'Elon Musk Club' Giveaway Scam
Online cons are evolving constantly. A decade ago, we had to deal with fake lotto rewards and prizes, while today, we often end up being offered expensive gadgets in exchange for a delivery fee. Of course, the fraudsters take the fees without sending anything to their victim. However, over the past year, there has been one field that online con artists have been focusing on heavily – cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency owners are the exact target of the tactic we are talking about today - the 'Elon Musk Club' Giveaway scam.
Elon Musk gained notoriety among newcomers to the cryptocurrency field because of his involvement with the Dogecoin project. Ever since then, his name has been a consistent part of many online cryptocurrency tactics. The majority of them are spread through social media. However, the 'Elon Musk Club' Giveaway scam focuses on email spam instead.
Recipients of the 'Elon Musk Club' Giveaway scam email will see an empty message, usually accompanied by an HTML file attachment. The attachment is, surprisingly, not unsafe. Instead, it uses JavaScript to redirect users to a public website, which hosts the main part of the tactic. This measure is likely to avoid Gmail filtering out the suspicious link.
What does the 'Elon Musk Club' Giveaway Scam Promise Users?
The fraudsters claim to be part of the 'Elon Musk Mutual Aid Fund' and inform the user that they are entitled to 'financial assistance' from other participants. To make use of the offer, they should follow another link and fill out some details. The data that these people request is simple – name, email address and Bitcoin wallet address.
If the user ends up supplying the data, they will see the page 'loading' for a few seconds – however, this is a fake animation. The page is not working with any data – instead, it is simply stalling to make the process appear more believable. After a certain time passes, users may see a prompt saying that they can receive up to 0.055 Bitcoin of financial aid. However, to receive the sum, they must first send 0.001 Bitcoin to prove they are not a robot. As you can probably guess, this is the culmination of the tactic – if you send the Bitcoin, you will not get anything in return. Beware of the 'Elon Musk Club' Giveaway scam and any other cryptocurrency giveaways. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, then you should probably keep your distance.
