Topic: [Warning] Currency exchange imposters in Telegram (Read 148 times)

A month ago I was scammed by imposter of shdvb in telegram. He didn't got from me much but I got a lesson learned that day. We all love to trade or finish a deal quickly and to do that we need a quick communication so we always move over to some chatting or messaging apps instead of continuing the conversation in forum's message system. But there are lot of imposters of regular dealers whether it be a regular currency exchanger or someone regular in providing service or goods. Now question comes how do we know its an imposter?


(A) Always check that you are dealing with the Telegram ID provided to you by the dealer.

Say I am trying to deal with shdvb. Real telegram ID of shdvb is: @mingxingxu and while searching in Telegram I get a lot of results here as shown in screenshot below:



(First^[1]), you should know how the telegram displays an account. There are two things: Telegram Username (i.e Display name) and Telegram UID. Now here comes the important part: Anyone can have same display name but Telegram UID is unique and hence if someone is already with Telegram UID @abc123 then no one can make another account with that UID again. So always remember that Telegram UID is something that you should be looking out for and check before dealing.

Here is how it is displayed:



As in search results you can see that there are lot of results like someone has set "@mingxingxu" in Telegram Display name but its UID is "@mingxingxux" and similarly there are other results with "@mingxingxu" as Telegram Display name but UID different than "@mingxingxu" . These are all traps waiting for someone to get fooled thinking that "@mingxingxu" which is being shown as Telegram Display name is actually the UID and the actual dealer while their actual UID is different (some having prefix or suffix or change in some characters).

So (Second^[2]), focus only on checking UID that matches the actual UID provided i.e  in this case is "@mingxingxu". After checking in this manner, I got the account I was looking for which is the real telegram account which has "@mingxingxu" as the Telegram UID as shown in screenshot below.




Now I have told you about only the first kind of traps.


(B) Traps with fake ID coated inside a hyperlink with actual ID as text.


This was the trap where I slipped.



Above is the screenshots of result again. All the results are actually channels except for the actual real TG account of shdvb as shown previously. Now if you get into one of these channels you will find a post already like in screenshot below.




This is the post as in that telegram channel and it may seem like they have provided the actual user ID and the direct link but its is actually hyperlinked with another fake telegram account in that Telegram channel. In here when I clicked I was directed to the Telegram account with UID: "@mignxingxu" which is different from actual Telegram ID of shdvb "@mingxingxu"




How to avoid falling for it ?

Whenever you start conversation with a telegram UID always check his UID by clicking his display name and verify if you are going to start conversation with the real dealer.

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For now that's it. I will be looking out for traps and will post if new type of traps surface in Telegram.

I would suggest currency exchangers or regular service and good providers who are regular in telegram and have provided the ID publicly to add this thread to their main post and warn about it so that they can stay safe and won't fall for traps dealing with imposters on telegram.

Feel free to add anything which you think I am missing or if I have made some mistakes in this post.