Bitcoin Forum

We faced a problem with our Lordmancer II Slack channel. There were many scam messages every day: in private, in general channels, etc. We constantly banned those spammers, but they just registered once again (even the names were the same!). Also each day we saw new members with names like "CEO", "cofounder", etc.

Finally we dicided to close the Slack channel. Now we use Telegram group https://t.me/lm2ico as a main communication channel.

I strongly recommend not to use Slack for ICO campaigns!

I don´t know what problems you have faced exactly, but not long ago I was contacted in an ICO slack group by an other member, with an fake message.
He tried to convince me that the ETH contract had some error and if I had already contributed, I will have to check it manually on www.NearlyMyETHERWalletButWithSpellingError.NoTLDecauseSomeWouldClickIt (the spellingerror on the original domain was hard to find and the phising site looked quite real.)

You mentioned now you use telegram, I don´t see the advantage of telegram over slack ? (but I have to admit I only faced problems throught slack too)

There was a lot of different messages. The least dangerous were about other ICOs. The most dangerous said that Lordmancer II ICO was open and contained a ETH address, some others had links to phishing sites.

Telegram is much defended against such messages. If someone are trying to send personal messages by using Telegram, each recipient can flag the message and the account will be banned automatically.

This issue have been known already on where there are lots of scammers who do spread phishing links on that chat medium on which newbie investors do easily fall out on the trap which they do logged-in on those link which are actually phishing links just to get the private keys of the wallet.Using Slack nowadays would really be dangerous on both investors and the project owner.There are lots of alternative though.

This isn't just slack, I have had a few instances of this occurring in telegram channels, and its become a pain in the ass to ban these scammers and also delete their messages.

Telegram does protect against this though.

They basically misspell a letter in myetherwallet.com in order to steal the private keys of an individual, for example, someone would replace e with a c, making myethcrwallet.com

Correct! They did the same. Also they sent private messages saying that ICO had started and asked to send ETH to their address.

If people are newbie enough then they would really deposit the ETH on those address believing that those are the exact ETH addresses on the said ICO which is really a frustrating thing.This is why we should really be aware on clicking links and check every letter if they are right and theres nothing being added just to fool people.If you are aware on this stuffs then you can really avoid this scam attempt.

I have seen a post like that in social media that gives awareness to the ICO investors, these people are really everywhere. If there's money, they'll hop in to that project and will do anything what it takes to get a fast and stolen money. I've seen something like myetheriwallet.com looks the real ones if you don't real the whole URL.

Well, what's the purpose of asking members from bitcointalk to third party apps like slack and telegram is something I cannot figure out. Have seen a lot of ICO asking to join their channel, but what prevents them from corresponding with participants in this forum itself, which would have been more transparent?

Discord is also a good app, slack is full of scammers now

Slack was indeed not designed for this purpose and it almost become a norm to expect scam and phishing through slack channel. I just hope either Slack can improve the security or we will have to use an alternative.

Slack ia for noobs at this current stage. You just can set boundaries. I got into two slacks of two ICOs and I saw the issue just hours later.

Spammers trying constantly to steal from me with messages to my inbox.

Slack is badd !!
hackers sending phishing emails thru slack groups
&
you can use whatever nickname you choose
i really hope everyone move from slack to telegram
good decision

That's why there some teams already migrated their public chat to the investors into the discord which already exploited by these scammers. I mean there is no bug like what was already happened in the slack channel and it seems to be a goot place to start another channel in the discord.

Everyday there are many messages pop up that Eth had some error or providing link to open. Newbies are kinda be a victim on these phishing websites. So all must beware of these issues that always popup on slack. Scammers are everywhere indeed.

There is a thread on here about a guy who thought he was getting some help setting up a pivx masternode.
Someone had him dump his private key and send it in pm (ok dumb yeah..but still).
Scammers lurking everywhere nowadays.

I'm very aware of the issues surrounding IDN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name for faking urls that at first glance are looking valid enough to click them.
If there isn't some drive by attack awaiting one, it's at best social engineering that even the most hardened browser could fall for, since the source of trouble is located in front of the screen :-( ETH contract errors are somehow in between the range of believeable.

(BTW the [ANN] Lordmancer II in your signature uses https://vk.cc/6XpEWc what's the reason? This is a thread inside this forum? I assume that referal is used for counting clicks but when my mouse hoovered above I hesitated *just* because of thoughts ^^^ above.)
 

ICO based slack channels run rampant with phishing scams, mostly disguised as the slackbot itself. If you happen to receive a private message regarding your myetherwallet, don't bother clicking the link, because most phishing scams rely on social engineering, in order to work. That means, you end up providing the hacker all the information they need, by doing so voluntary,  but often unknowingly, due to the nature of the scheme.

im just a beginner so i im not totally encounter how to use slack. to all bitcoin users, beware in joining in slacks campaign. good luck to everyone.

Yes slack is not safe

To be honest I've always had problems since day one of using Slack, Telegram it's 1000 times better. Plus, if you let Slack to do it, they'll spam the hell out of you  >:( >:(

Telegram is much better imo.

Different channels have different purposes. The forum is good, but to be honest it is quite old school. People outside bitcointalk will not join it for an ICO.

Sure sign crypto wants to expand above it's current reach.

There is a lot of Twitter activity surrounding crypto - just that medium is strange. Limited single purpose, unsuited for any dialogues more along a constant stream of announcements. Google Wave survived, now maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. Porting the old forum data onto something new could prove to be next to impossible. Wave would be pretty much up to date.

Thanks for the information. Can the owner of slack messaging software take it down since slack is already compromised.This will help to forestall further compromising other people ether wallets.

Those using slack are in a large volnurability pitfall.

This was a sample from a scammer i received today:


Hi John,
You have a new direct message from the BlackmoonCrypto workspace (blackmooncrypto.slack.com).

@kukurigu77 View in the archives

Carol P. Janes 8:17 AM, September 19th
**Important Notification from the ICO Security team**


Please be advised that we had some problems with the Ethereum based Token smart contracts.
We decided that the best way to solve the problem is to fork the Smart Contracts.

It was a simple process and everything worked out without issues.
We implemented a seamless procedure to update the smart contract using an automatic process through MyEtherWallet services.

Please visit https://myetherwalletsignin.com/#view-wallet-info to unlock your wallet and follow the instructions on their website.

Failure to do so may result in loss of your tokens.


Thank you for your cooperation and understanding!
The ICO Security team


---

I get these every day, and am only registered in one Slack channel.

I think it is better to hide the link in your message! Otherwise someone can occasionally click it!

I am not sure about other site. I often received spam from slack authoreon that contains security issues with mew. In fact it is phising site that they want to steal your eth and token in your wallet. Never click the link and better to stop the subscribe mail in your email service.

No matter what the medium is, there will always be scammers. Don't ever click on any links, start a new thread to support if you get a direct message from anyone, never give out your private keys. 

Good advice!

Appreantely its not only you but all the Slack channels I am part of are being hit by scammers. There should be a way to stop this else Slack will loose a lot of customers.

I think that Slack is considered to be a good tool for a team. But it works badly in case of external communications with a community.

Good to see some negative sentiment building for the usage of Slack in the crypto world. Slack is great for some things, like Internal team communication of a larger company, but I don't know how it got so popular for cryptocurrency. Channels can become a nightmare to sort through, and the lack of tying things to a phone number makes mass creation of accounts even easier. Decided to not get a company Slack early on, because the moderation appeared like too much of a nightmare.

Quite annoying when you sign up to receive updates via slack and someone is spamming telling you to click this link and change myetherwallet. Some people actually do it and then realise it is a scam after

Used the Slack it or not, participants must know that there are obvious scams. It was part of the money making system now and never it will gone. Not just in Slack but almost every platform where lots of people are engaging.

What users must do is to used their working mind and knows the obvious one. Since they engaged in ICO campaign, Im sure majority of it does have an idea about obvious shit like phishing attempt or any kind of fraudulent activites.

I hate slack it is so easy for hackers to scam people... There should be some kind of decentralised chat

thanks to this very important information, but I think the spammers on the slack channel are coming more and more not just on Lordmancer II channels, spammers are starting to spread to other slack altcoins channels.

Why do you think it should be decentralised?

Slack is clearly not the right tool, and Telegram is not the right replacement to Slack - it's more of a stream of conciseness.  No way to participate in groups. 

I've seen Rocket Chat used by one group and Discord was just mentioned.  Others in the space seem to be Ryver and Mattermost. 

I wonder if Kik would be able to be good for this?

Or better yet, don't click on links from non trusted sources.

Slack doesn't force you to open the links - be smarter with your money.

If a deal sounds to good to be true, it most likely is.

I agree to beware of Slack, because I have joined some Slack channels for ICOs, and get a lot of phishing and scam messages. So this isn't a problem with the coin, it's a problem with people exploiting Slack.
Just always be wary in general I think. A lot of this fake Slack stuff preys on fear, so don't do anything in a panic ever.

Same troubles on Bitcointalk, Newbie Spam and such. However phone numbers are so old fashioned surveillance state, aren't they? I am not interested in any channels that require a cellphone to enter. And my smartphone from china got bugged by its manufactoring company even before packaging.

People who invested livetime in their accounts are legit. Maybe there could be a currency for that. A forum coin?
In a way there had been crypto projects focusing on attention economy, currently up&running: Steem.
Seems Slack got an edge above Steem in the ways of beeing dirt cheap, so people flocked to that.

We should avoid slack if we are new to crypto's since there are so many phising,exploits and everything out there and I'm totally annoyed to used that app since there so many Phising act pops up on my header and its so disturbing that's why I uninstalled my slack app and use telegram as my alternative.

Daily there are many people sending fake emails through the slack channel and mostly ICO campaign. Sometimes we are getting after the ICO because there are many bounty people will be staying there so to steal the coins and as well as ETH also.

I had a bad experience with such slack physhing link, so since that time I just delete all slack e-mails without opening.
Most of new ICOs don't even use slack now.

I've got several messages about myetherwallet, some problem with it i don't know, and link which was in message was phishing link.
You should be very careful with slack and always double check links.

I think you can use Slack for teammates or for people outside of the team but strictly with invitations.
 

Slack is really bad now.
Almost all ICO now moving to telegram. And it is great!