A method for selectively checking data security sequences of received vehicle-to-X messages, in which a number of the vehicle-to-X messages are received and/or sent in an operating cycle of a vehicle-to-X communication system. In an operating cycle, a reliability assessment of the received vehicle-to-X message is performed by checking the data security sequence, an information content of the received messages is read without prior checking of the data security sequence. In the operating cycle, a subset of the number of received vehicle-to-X messages is selected on the basis of the information contents, and solely the data security sequences of selected vehicle-to-X messages are checked. This results in the advantage that a reliability assessment is no longer carried out on all the received vehicle-to-X messages before they are processed, thereby enabling a reduction in the checking capacity that must be reserved for checking the data security sequence.