[EDIT 2/7/2018] I will constantly update this post in order to include the best tips that you guys provide here. Your contribution will be added as a quote of your post. Let's make this an awesome resource for all crypto-investors, so that scammers will find it much more difficult to fool people!
[/EDIT]The purpose of this thread is to help beginners to stay safe in the cryptocurrency world. I think that as the cryptocurrency adoption widens, more and more non-technical users are making their first steps in this direction. Unfortunately, they are vulnerable in the face of so many clever scammers, who thrive on their lack of knowledge and awareness.
Let’s keep this a serious discussion and try to expose the most common scams beginners fall for nowadays. Please refrain from promoting services of any kind. It is ok to share some relevant tools which could help protect people from being scammed, but remember that the purpose of this thread is to increase the awareness regarding crypto scams.
My point is that if we help people who just now are starting with cryptocurrency become more educated, so that they could have a positive experience, then we will be one step closer to mass-adoption of cryptocurrency. On the other hand, it pisses me off that some scammers become rich at the expense of naive newbies. No to say how annoying it is when these newbies then give up on crypto and complain that everything regarding this domain is a scam, discouraging others from investing.
1. To start, I guess that the most common scam these days is the one circulating on Twitter. Let’s just call it
“The reward the community SCAM”.
It goes like this:
- The scammer creates multiple fake accounts of influential people of the cryptocurrency world. They misspell the name, but only by a letter or two, so that people might mistakenly believe the acount is real. For instance, instead of “officialmcafee” they will write “officiaImcafee”. The difference is that instead of the “l” is an uppercase “i”. Then, they copy the profile picture and some posts of the target profile.
- Each time the target profile tweets something, the fake profile will respond (usually within a second, thanks to a bot) to that tweet with a text like this one below:
Another one:
It’s still amazes me how some people can be so naive. Believe it or not, lots of people fall for this and send money to the scammer. Of course, they never get anything back. When you encounter such scams, do your good deed of the day and report them to twitter at once. For amusement, you can check their address, to see how many gullible people fell for it. Some scammers made thousands of $ with this.
The takeaway from this is:
-
People don't just donate their cryptocurrencies. -
Always check if the post belongs to the real profile. Look for the little check mark sitting right next to the name of the profile owner. If it exists, it means it has been verified by Twitter and it belongs to the respective person or organization. If not, stay away! -
Don't rush into receiving free stuff. Usually that's not the case and you will get scammed.2.
ICO scams. Unfortunately, lately there have been some good ICOs that got hacked during the sale, so that the contribution address was changed by the hacker. In other cases, the emails of whitelisted people got into the wrong hands, so that scammers sent phishing emails to all who subscribed for the sale. The result: millions of dollars stolen. Read more about this here:
https://news.bitcoin.com/neo-icos-make-a-shaky-start/https://news.bitcoin.com/the-bee-token-crowdsale-stung-by-400k-phishing-scam/In other cases, fake twitter accounts of popular ICOs posted messages after the sale closed that, due to popular request, the sale has been reopened and they also provied an address to contribute. Such was the case with Arcblock, for which the public sale closed whithin minutes. A scammer managed to get a few millions of dollars from naive investors using this method. I wish I made a printscreen then.
The takeaway from this is:
-
When visiting an ICO website, make sure you are on the right one (do some research, you’ll figure it out!). If you want to participate in the sale, bookmark it and only visit it again from the bookmarks. Don’t forget to check in your browser, left of the website address, if it’s secure.
-
Only contribute to the address provided on the website (the right one). NEVER ever contribute to an address which was provided on email, twitter, reddit etc. Also, don’t follow links from any of these sources, to make sure that you don’t become a phishing victim. Remember, only acces the ICO website from your bookmarks.-
Remember that scammers are very creative, so that they will always come with new ways to try and take your money. Always check and double check whether you are contributing to the right address. If you have any doubts, just don’t do it. Better safe than sorry!When researching an ICO, a good way to determine whether the project is legit or a scam is to:
verify the team through social media etc. I think team should make a video at least. Team members is the best important thing in projects.
It would be amazing if the more experienced members of this community shared on this thread their advice on good practices when dealing with crypto. Let’s try to keep this discussion on point and make cryptocurrencies safe for new and inexperienced users!
PS: If all you got from this thread is some ‘great ideas’ on how to scam people, then I hope karma will be unmerciful on you and that there is a special place in hell (or whatever it is called in other religions) / prison (for atheists).
