Love him or hate him (and there doesn’t seem to be much in between), the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is not going away anytime soon. In his ongoing quest to change humanity for the better (or worse, depending on your opinion), he’s come up with all sorts of zany ideas. One of those is a service called Xmail, Musk’s prospective competitor for the world’s largest email service: Gmail.
Musk likes to shake things up, and what better way to shake things up than introduce a new email service? Do we need a new email service? Up for debate. The whole thing is far-fetched but the man bought Twitter and also jumped around like an idiot on stage with Donald Trump so you never know. Regardless, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.
What is Xmail?
So far, all we know is that Musk has been talking about it a lot. The whole thing started back in February when a fake message about Gmail shutting down went viral. The post got so much traction that the X Gmail account was forced to respond.
That’s when a security engineer at X tweeted about the new service and asked Musk when it would become a reality. Musk’s curt reply: “It’s coming.”
On Dec. 15, Musk continued the conversation. A user tweeted that having an email account with X was the only thing that could get him to leave the beloved Gmail. Musk replied, “Interesting” and said he would need to think about some things.
Needing to rethink the way email works doesn’t sound like there’s a new product on the way. It sounds like a wild idea that needs to be studied and developed. By these measures, it doesn’t sound like we’re going to be getting Xmail anytime soon.
There’s also the fact that Gmail is ridiculously popular. Gmail was launched in 2004, and one of its selling points is that it filters out spam and malware so you only see the messages that are pertinent to you (for the most part). It would be an uphill battle to wrench those users away, especially those who’ve been with the service from the beginning.
In the short term, even Musk just announcing his intent to create a new email address means that there are going to be some very specific phishing scams coming down the pipeline.
Why the Xmail Announcement is Bad
Per Forbes, there are about 600 million X users. Not all of those users would sign up for Xmail, and that would barely dent Google’s dominance with Gmail and its billions of users. The real issue is a security one.
Phishing scams, where criminals try to get personal information from people by pretending to be a well-known source, are getting increasingly more sophisticated, not to mention easier to pull off with AI.
Scammers could easily send out an email offering something like early access to Xmail and then ask for Gmail login credentials. This would make it incredibly easy to steal information, especially from the Musk faithful who would take the message at face value.
As of right now, Xmail does not exist and it doesn’t look like it will for a while. Be safe out there.
Published: Dec 16, 2024 05:47 pm