Bitcoin Forum

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has published a document seeking to warn citizens of the increasing prevalence of scams executed through fraudulently posing as technical support staff for a company. The FBI’s notes that virtual currencies are becoming “increasingly targeted by tech support criminals.”

Cryptocurrency Tech Support Theft on the RIse

The FBI has issued a warning emphasizing the “widespread” nature of “Tech Support Fraud” – which “involves a criminal claiming to provide customer, security, or technical support in an effort to defraud unwitting individuals.” The FBI’s IC3 division reports an increase in tech support fraud of 86% during 2017 when compared with 2016 – with last year’s claimed losses “amount[ing] to nearly $15 million.”

The report states that “Some recent complaints [have] involve[d] criminals posing as technical support representatives for […] virtual currency exchangers,” with individual victim losses often in the thousands of dollars.”

The FBI states that “Criminals pose as virtual currency support,” luring “Victims to contact fraudulent virtual currency support numbers usually located via open source searches. The fraudulent support asks for access to the victim’s virtual currency wallet and transfers the victim’s virtual currency to another wallet for temporary holding during maintenance. The virtual currency is never returned to the victim, and the criminal ceases all communication.”

In other instances, criminals conducting tech support fraud “who have access to a victim’s electronic device use the victim’s personal information and credit card to purchase and transfer virtual currency to an account controlled by the criminal.”

See more: https://news.bitcoin.com/fbi-warns-crypto-scammers-posing-exchange-support-staff/

Every time I read news like this it strikes me how people can be easily deceived. Unless the site has been hacked, it would be hard to get me using a number or a support service that was not mentioned on the the company/exchange official site. Even if it was offered, we all should know that we must never give away personal details like passwords, or private keys or any private data, but apparently a lot of users don't know what private data is, and naively give all this information away.

This shows that we are still very far away from massive adoption in the crypto world. I mean no disrespect with what I'm about to say, but the services being offered must be "stupidity proof", and right now, they are not, and the average Joe would probably make costly mistakes if they were using crypto.

Yes, it is really easy to cheat on a lot of users using the fake support service. Experienced hackers can get almost all data they need to hack a user's account.

These criminals would probably find it easier to pose as bank staff and scam routine individuals. The number of people who have cryptocurrency is small. Plus those who have large holdings are probably sophisticated enough to see through the scam, or do not store large amounts of cryptocurrencies at exchanges. They would most likely have their coins in cold storage.

Regardless of how "stupidity proof" services are, people will always fall for scams. It's impossible to spoon feed everyone here with proper crypto market etiquette and it shouldn't be needed. If people fall for a scam, then it's their own fault which they have to take full responsibility for. I have never seen people be more stupid than the sort we are dealing with in this market, and that's not an exaggeration. Even on this forum I see people some time "offer help" where they ask to send them a PM to discuss things further. It's a wide spread problem that only the most desperate and empty headed people can fall for. I have been a noob in this market as well, just like how a lot others here were noobs, but never like this what we constantly keep reading about. It's seriously embarassing.

there always be someone who will belive to scammers and fall a prey of criminal, regardless those  stupid  methods which they use

They can say anything they want, we know it's only a scare tactic. We also know they cannot stop it because they have never stopped some of the biggest financial crimes before the cryptospace.

The cryptospace has made it easier and faster to privately move value around the world, good luck stopping that.