Bitcoin Forum

Everyday, we face some threads here in bitcointalk with complain that people are targeting others to scam.
I found some people are doing that in different ways. Yesterday, I have visited a IEO group and asked for attention from admin. Couple of minutes later, someone knocked me and started to ask if I want to invest? He claimed he is an admin of that IEO group. I checked his profile and the admin from the group. For a moment I was fool. The scammer who knocked me was using the username of the original admin, in his (scammer) bio profile.
But, I further looked and got the different.
Don't send any fund if anyone ask you, no real project's admin will PM you.

The more important thing is not to visit or get involved in all these IEO or ICO groups/projects, what's the need, when its either an outsider of the project trying to scam you or the project owners themselves, either way you're(possibly)being scammed.

You can have the same attitude here.

Always ask questions and answer them on public. Avoid pm.

Many scammers will try to fool you on pm. When you are posting in public many people will give their opinions and maybe even tag a scammer before you notice anything unusual.

It's already suspicious that why he'd pm you and ask you to invest. It is an IEO group but the approach shouldn't be like that.

Just don't trust anyone in such groups. It's known that many scammers are living on telegram though there are still some legit conversation that happens there.

I don't get what you said. Why will not I visit IEO telegram group? It's important get updated with the community if you want to invest or already invested.

PM can be dangerous here as well, scammers target specially newbie to send phishing link.

That is true,  scammers are basically on all telegram group, the more popular some project is, more scammers will try to trick you.

The whole Internet is a risky place if you don't know what you are doing, if you are gullible, don't use fair judgement and believe anything you read it is only a matter of time before someone scams you.

Telegram is not to be blamed. It is just a medium for communication. The blame is on the unsuspecting users looking to make a quick buck and the scammers taking advantage of them.   

It is not a Telegram-related problem but you can face it in this forum, the crisis is bad in Telegram because thousands of accounts can be created without checking any information "You do not even need to verify the phone officially (any free VOIP will work.)"
Also, if you do not adjust your Telegram settings, you will increase the problem either, these are the most important adjustments you should make -----> Things a Newbie needs to know on Telegram (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5165240.msg51828086#msg51828086).

Be safe and ignore all ICO/IEO groups

This is already an old trick but new telegram users can still fall for this. Good thing you double checked. I don't understand why telegram is not removing that space for bio since it is being used by scammers to put usernames of other people.

This is common all social media sites. On Twitter scammers impersonate handles of others, a popular way is the use of small letter, l to represent capital I. And it's almost impossible to tell the difference when just looking at that basic information. Look deeper at number of followers, media and the scam is easily exposed. Same with telegram, try clicking on the admin through the group to confirm if you'd be lead to the same profile.

Pretty much the same as usual unfortunately. Telegram (and other media) scammers have been around for quite some time, impersonating admins (or others) and luring people on to a one-on-one conversation in order to scam them. At critical hyped and hasted moments, they don’t even need to take you on to a private conversation. I recall a bunch of ICOs in 2018 where, during the ICO sale, scammers would create a profile similar to that of the Admin, and change the ICO’s deposit address for that of their own. In some extreme cases, they would even hack the real admin´s credentials and do it from the official admin’s Telegram account.

You can obviously still use these channels to obtain information, but when it comes to moving your funds you need to triple check who you are dealing with, and if the prompt is sound and legit.

I faced the same kind of issues many times. Once someone knocked me to help him to withdraw his BTC. I have to log in a website and withdraw his BTC and for that, I will be paid a good amount of BTC. Then I search about the site he provided and found It's totally a phishing site. People become greedy Because scammer offers good amount in return. Another problem is, unknown people add me on many groups without my permission which is very annoying. I simply report spam and leave.                     

That's really a stupid thing, for a moment, very much pro people can also get the impression that that's the username and he is the real person. If telegram doesn't allow to put @ at bio, that would certainly be okay.

Your guide is great, and helpful. I knew that, but it does not mean newbies will know that steps.
By the way, such traps to catch naive and inexperienced users not only occur in Telegram groups, but also in Discord channels. Scammers always use the same name of admins/moderators, but in fact they are different. People tend to easily to get scammed when they see someone pops up to help with usernames of admins/ moderators.

Telegram is a very risky place for only those who cant take their eye off 'too good to be real' offers from scammers,mere using telegram you will always receive messages from people you dont know,its not a must to reply them but many find it difficult to ignore messages and once you replied you are giving chances to get preyed on

Telegram is a place where a lot of people get scammed. Most people pose as admin's whenever you ask for help from the group. Most of them change their usernames to look like admins. Whenever someone PMS you, check the username well before you respond.

no i am using telegram for many years and i found many groups which helped me to learn trading and investing , scammers are everywhere not only in telegram , they are in your city to may be in same road thing is we should be careful and fall for there scam

The scammer is getting smarter day by day, they are trying their very best to fool anyone, they were impersonating the admin account. They mimic the real account, they use sweet coating words to encourage their target victim, or they will show a fabricated documents to claim their authority.

Some tips to beat scammer:

1: Identify their Admin account
2: Check member @usernames to determine if you are talking to the right person.

https://medium.com/@moxyone/how-to-protect-yourself-from-scammers-on-telegram-3239360e0578 (https://medium.com/@moxyone/how-to-protect-yourself-from-scammers-on-telegram-3239360e0578)

Remember that if you have contacts directly with real admins, you have to keep in mind that you should never disclose your personal identities, private keys, seeds, and giving them rights/ access to your computers. There are probabilities that real admins are scammers, too. Especially if you are joining groups of young projects. Be careful, with admins and fake admins in Telegram groups.

But i think in most groups you can see the admin signature on the name, So I think it's not harder to find a fraud if we looked carefully. Also what if we could include some kind of notation for the admin? visible one? Then no one can cheat anybody because it's public.

Messengers were created for communication and the most that you can do is complain about spam. For any investment, it’s worth several times to think over and double-check the data of the development team, as a rule, all investments are made on exchanges or on their personal website. And thanks for the warning, I think newcomers will definitely draw their conclusions, but the scammers do not sit idle and always come up with new ways to cheat.

Absolutely correct,In Private message usually the way of scammers or even hackers to victimize us.i have lots of PM’s in telegram From random person that sometimes I don’t know where did they get my telegram since I only joined two or three groups but spammers comes from nowhere

So I think the best option is every time you will receive a PM from random account that nothing to do with you,just report Spam and you’ll be safe

It is important that you know how to keep yourself safe from any kinds of scam attack from telegrams like avoiding PMs, blocking telegram users that you didn't know and changing settings the same settings that you can see in the image I will provide below. Check it out.

"Data and Storage" should be like this. All are off to avoid automatic downloading of any files.

Privacy and Security should be changed to this settings. Phone Number and groups should be changed to My Contacts only so that you won't get added to any group without your consent or permission to add you in a group and no one will be able to see your phone number.

"PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN DOING NOTHING"

Yep, part of why Telegram is so popular among scammers is that is very easy to make an acc that is not easy to trace back to them, and doesn't require some special knowledge.