Hello Altcoinhunters,
In the last few weeks I've seen an incredible increase of new "announcements" that are fake and contain viruses.
The problem with those announcements is, that they look really real, because they copy recently released legit projects.
How do they work?Well, basically they just copy an recently released project (mostly 24hours old projects or younger) and change the wallet download links.
What happens is that the project looks legit (good website, discord and telegram channel, twitter, facebook etc.) and new users are easily fooled into thinking that its the real project.
Also the person releasing the announcement looks legit(high activity and a lot of merit etc.), because they use hacked accounts.
Once you download their wallets and install them, your computer will be infected and they have access to anything that is on your computer. Passwords, wallets etc.
I'm pretty sure they also track your inputs, so its easy for them to get all your passwords. After that, they can access any exchange you are registerd on, copy most of your wallets and steal all your altcoins or bitcoins.
How can you spot them?The first thing you might note, is that the announcement is self-moderated. That doesnt mean it has to be an fake announcement, but you should ask yourself why a
good new project would self-moderate their announcement.
The second thing you should look for, is if the wallets are released on github. If the download links redirect to other sites, like mega.nz etc. you can be 99% sure that it contains a virus.
The third thing you can look for, is if there was a project released with the same name in the last few days or earlier.
What you can do to help new users from falling for those scams.Firstly you should report the post immediately to a moderator through the report function. They are the only ones that are able to remove those links and delete those posts and the faster you report them, the faster they can react. After that you can leave a comment on the topic, let the people know what you've found out. Maybe you save somebody a lot of money by doing that. Most of the times your comments will get deleted by the scammer, because the post is self-moderated, but it takes some time for them to do so and in the meanwhile another user might see your comment.
I think, we as a community, should work together on keeping this place a safe place and help the new people to not get easily tricked by scammers.
If you have more suggestions or warnings for new users, I'd love to hear them.
Stay safe!
