Fraudulent weblinks shared under the guise of 'news reports' on famous tech companies launching Cryptocurrency platforms - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 18, 2023
Update (18 January 2022):
Another social media post with a link to a news article similar to the fake article about Amazon launching a new bitcoin is being shared across social media. According to this news article purportedly published by the BBC, Tesla has allegedly launched a new cryptocurrency trading platform called ‘360 Bit Pro Soft.’ Let’s verify this information through this article.
Claim: Tesla launches a new cryptocurrency trading platform called ‘360 Bit Pro Soft.’
Fact:  No media outlets have reported about the alleged cryptocurrency trading platform by Tesla. The website on which the news article is published is a clone of the BBC News website. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We first looked for news reports about the launch of the alleged cryptocurrency trading platform known as ‘360 Bit Pro Soft’ by Tesla. However, there are no news reports about the same. Tesla is one of the largest companies in the world right now, and any product launched by them would generally garner the attention of the news media. Further, we looked at the social media handles of Tesla and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, to check for any information about this trading platform. None of them had any information about the so-called ‘360 Bit Pro Soft.’
Keenly observing the website in which this news article is published about the launch gave away a few things which reveal the fakeness of it. Although the page is designed to look like the BBC News website, instead of leading to other pages or news articles, clicking on any hyperlink on the website leads to a sign-up box which says ‘change your life today,’ Even the domain name of the website if some ‘frumilonline.top‘ which is not the domain name of BBC News (‘www.bbc.com.’) Entering any details on such fake websites is not advisable as personal information may get compromised.
Published (05 August 2022):
A post on social media claims that Amazon has launched a new platform named BitcoinPrime. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Amazon launches its new platform called BitcoinPrime.
Fact: Amazon has not launched any platform called BitcoinPrime. The link mentioned in the post leads to fraudulent website which at first glance looks like a Financial Times article. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The post has a link attached to it, and clicking on that led us to a website which on first glance looked like the Financial Times website. But the URL of the website is not of Financial Times.  Besides that, clicking on any of the hyperlinks in the website only leads to the sign-up box on the website where it says ‘change your life today.’ Under that are three columns: First Name, Last Name and Email.
To cross-check, we searched on the internet with relevant keywords to understand if the Financial Times website had published any such article. We found that the website has not published anything about Amazon launching BitcoinPrime. Further, we searched on the internet to check the same, but we did not find any credible information. Since Amazon is a well known multinational Corporation, any new service or product launched by them would get extensive media coverage. Since there is no such coverage,  it can be concluded that Amazon has not launched any new platform named BitcoinPrime.
Also, there is an image in the article with a caption that reads ‘Interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, about BitcoinPrime.’ A reverse image search on the image led us to a tweet from Jeff Bezos. The tweet contains a short video in which Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan and Director Zoya Akhtar sit with him. This is an event organised by Amazon Prime Video in January 2020, and the full video can be seen here.
To summarise, Amazon has not launched a new platform called BitcoinPrime; the link given in this post is fraudulent.