Bitcoin Forum

[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:
https://imgur.com/XFCLhS1.jpg
Another one:
https://i.imgur.com/CdrVPy9.jpg
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.
https://i.imgur.com/1ekc6he.jpg
- 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:

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).

If this is for beginners why post here.? Better post this in beginners and help section.

By the way you have great heart to reach out new comers not to get scam.

Thanks for that, pretty helpful to the new guys.

thank you for sharing the information. this can help the beginners.

It's well written about Twitter. It is advisable to write down the rest of the rules about investing in ICO and analyzing upcoming projects. Then this article will be an excellent guide for beginners.

I'm glad you guys find this information useful.

 
You're probably right, I'm considering asking a mod to move the thread there, maybe it will get more exposure.

You mean making a complete guide on how to invest in ICO's and review upcoming projects? For now, my intention is to raise the awareness of beginners, because it simply pisses me off when scammers get away with naive people's money.

People should also look at this awesome site, it is valid to other similar offerings www.whalegate.org

What's wrong with you? You made a thread ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2875554 ) where you accused that website of being a scam and now you say it's awesome?

Wow there is unique thing happen when he says that's scam in his thread then he says that is awesome thing in his comment. And he's detail enough on giving the reason that is scam. But thus time he says that is an amazing project. Does he want to add the victim.

It seems there is a harsh competition among scammers  :D. Check this printscreen I just made:

https://i.imgur.com/wAfyBRP.jpg

ICOs are the main source of scam. Don't fall in to ICOs before search.

Thanks to users like you the internet thrives thanks for all your collaboration I believe a lot in Your tips and I will follow them step by step lazy to type

I agree with this: it would probably be best to post this in the Beginners and Help section. Decent write up, but this would probably get more use and be more helpful if in the right part of the forums.

Thanks for the post!

Thanks for this guide, I think it is best 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.

nice share pretty good information

thanks for posting this great information here

The manager always update about progress the ICO is one of sign to detect the ICO success. It is my experience and proved right. We can asking some questions to dev.  So, we know the progress of ICO :)

Great tip! I added this to the original post as a quote. From now on, I will add useful tips, such as yours, to the original post.



I already messaged a mod to move it, but he replied that it fits better here. Consequently, it will remain where it is.

you start a good head but you should do it at beginners/help section.Moderator could relocate the thread.you spent much effort.This thread can be useful for everybody

Thank you all for the good feedback!

Here we go, another scammer. This one pretends to be Vitalik Buterin and put that blue sign next to his name. Attention, that is NOT the twitter check mark!

https://i.imgur.com/aixJDxX.jpg

Unfortunately he already managed to fool some naive people. When you see this kind of tweets, please report them ASAP!

Clearify.io developed a tool for reporting twitter scams: https://www.clearify.io/report-a-scam/ .  This is their announcement tweet: https://twitter.com/UseClearify/status/961802660134371328

The beginners have to be very careful while investing in the ico's they need to know about the ico where they want to invest I woud advise them to go throug with the ico rateing to go with the better crypto investment

It seems the twitter scam that I wrote about in the original post has evolved quite a lot. Now the scam post is followed by hundreds of other bot accounts which reply that they received the reward. Coinbase is facing the same issues: https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/967094969289846784

The only thing that I am going to do to not to get scammed is to bump into their Telegram Channel because the social community of every ICO and projects are one of the most effective evidences to knowing that whether they're scams, fraud or bogus or not.
Social community is very hard to build especially when you don't have enough marketing team to organize them as whole community that is why scams have no Telegram Channels or if the has then the members cannot be faked because good ICO or projects really do have more than a thousand members and some of them are active and willing to answer all of the inquiries asked by other members.

To make it short and simple: don't give your money to anyone you haven't checked on. If you have checked on an ICO or whatewer you wanna invest in, still don't give them anything. Double-check.

He publishes it here to get a merit. Really it's clear :)
It's unlikely that people left here who share classified information from a pure heart.

1. What difference does it make concerning merit whether the thread is here or in another section? Enlighten me, because I don't see any connection.

2. Should new users just stop posting useful information comprising of ~1000 words simply because they might be accused that they want to get merit? Such a crime, who would want to be accused of that? We should just stick to "Cool project!" posts.

3. What do you mean by classified information? Do you even know what that is?

4. How does your post add any value to this thread? If you don't have anything to add regarding the aforementioned topic, please refrain from posting.