Topic: Telegram and it's misue for scammers. - page 2. (Read 392 times)

This is how exactly scammers tried to scam our local thread user, Crypto Library, a few months ago.


Not only Crypto Library but also some others. If I am not wrong, one member was affected by this scam attempt. Telegram should forbid writing another telegram handle in the bio. People are getting fooled because of this. The first thing that should be noticed is that you will see the account is not in your contact. The 2nd thing is you have to check why there are no old messages. If they have cleared, why did they have to? If you see new messages, double-check the handle.

I think the thing that could help people from getting scammed is your privacy settings:

1. Don't allow anyone to add you to groups/channels except for your own contacts, or nobody at all. I have been in real groups before, only to get added later to another one that looks exactly the same as the first one (with the same picture, and almost the same number of subscribers).
2. If possible, don't set a username. AFAIK, if you don't have one set, no one can message you.

I would also imagine that scammers don't want to spend any money, so maybe an animated avatar + custom emoji using Telegram Premium would help you protect the users of your channel to a certain degree.

Feel free to add a technique you were able to discover and let everyone aware to avoid being scammed. When you add yours, I encourage to share a little bit of the background of how you discovered it.

My whole campaign management business runs in Telegram and Bitcointalk PM and it's very easy for me to get trapped by the scammers. It requires me to stay alert always. But scammers try their everything to take their unethical share. They don't just try to fool me but they try to fool my clients too.

Other day Sinbad Management was telling me:

My response was as usual, that's not me. Sinbad management is smart enough to understand the environment too. We both were aware so no harm happened but if one of us was not good enough to realize the attempt then there could be some financial loss.

Later the same guys (I don't think it could be anyone else, because both happened in the same day in a difference of few hours) PMed me pretending he is Sinbad. He failed though however it took me half an hour to understand the trick.

Let me share two screenshots (real username removed and conversation with real Sinbad also removed).

1. Original Sinbad



2. Fake Sinbad 



The thing that struggled me to find both username were the same. I checked letter by letter, both same. Nothing was there to differentiate the two accounts by username. But I knew there were something that I was missing and I did not give up until I found it.

When I was clicking on the original Sinbad username it was copying in the clipboard but when I was clicking on the fake Sinbad username it was showing the Sinbad profile and SEND MESSAGE link was taking me to original Sinbad chat (I was lost there and started to think Telegram have this error and the fake one is the real guy).



What the scammer did is:
Check image 1 and 2.
The scammer updated his bio with the same exact letters and symbol that Sinbad username has in Telegram. By default Telegram set your bio information in the same place where they display your username if you do not set up a username. The scammer discovered this little trick and utilized it with hope to scam either me or the Sinbad management.

Next time when you are receiving message then check twice. Under the username what does it say: Username or Bio?
Version used: Telegram Desktop