Bitcoin Forum

Fake giveaway is another easy way for scammers to scam. They have trapped many innocent people with such fake giveaway. After being scammed, many say they were victims of scams and many did not say they were victims of scams. I have seen many victims of such scams lose their money. Most of the newbies here fall into such scams. Because they don't know how to verify everything.

They think, since they are offering 10x 5x profit, why not join the giveaway with my fund and raise the fund! And this thought turns into his biggest mistake. Recently fake giveaway scammers are more active, they are releasing new ideas to show themselves loyal. But scammers get caught up in the experience. Newbie has to think, how is it possible to give 10-5x profit? One thing to keep in mind, a company does not ask to send funds before giving any kind of giveaway. They make giveaway names in the name of big companies. Which makes the newbie more attractive in that giveaway. The names of the companies they use more often Binance, Coinbase, Ethereum, XRP, Tesla etc

I want to write in detail about their promotion ways. And how to keep yourself out of this promotion.

Their four main ways of promoting.

• Telegram.
  
• Twitter.
• Youtube.
• Medium.

Telegram.
The highest amount of fake giveaway groups are created on the telegram. In the name of several big companies. You will see thousands of members in their group in a very short time. Their team members give fake screenshots and say they got giveaway 5btc 10btc. All of which is to scam people by fooling them. Many newbies send funds by looking at these fake screenshots. And their journey into the crypto world ends as soon as they start.

https://i.ibb.co/f0sLsGs/new.png

Twitter.
On twitter, scammers post giveaway photos by creating an account in the name of the company's ceo or company name. Because such links on Twitter, Twitter is considered spam.

https://i.ibb.co/VgKj78f/elon-musk.png

Youtube.
Editing ama video of ceo of different companies and uploading the name of giveaway. Recently many crypto related YouTube channels have been reported to be hacked. All these channels hack purpose, use to perform such scams.

https://i.ibb.co/TLFB3b7/Screenshot-20200117-124109-You-Tube.jpg

Medium.
There is now a huge amount of fake giveaway posts available in medium. They make it seem like they are actually giving a giveaway by posting it. They design posts like the same original website. As a result, newbies become confused.

https://i.ibb.co/xFp38W9/elon-musk-medium.png

---

How to protect yourself from such scams?

To keep yourself away from such scams, you must bookmark the websites which you need. Because official websites have all their social media links. If you are offered any kind of giveaway, you must check official website's social media or official announcement, for confirmation really they are offering any giveaway or not.  

You can set privacy setting so that no one can add you without your permission in any telegram group. I've got a post that will help you know how to do telegram privacy setting : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5072351

Newbies please keep in mind In the real world there is nowhere such a huge amount of profit for free,100% chance of being scammed where huge profit is shown.

Feel free to share more information if you think it is important.

If you have to send money to get money it is not a giveaway. Crypto isn't created from thin air, except worthless tokens. If the asset that is created had any value people would be ready to pay money to own it. These airdrops and giveaways are useless.

Yes you are right. But many people fall into these scams. We have seen before and still see many victims of giveaway scams. The last victim, he was lost $3k by participating in a fake giveaway. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5214770.msg53515867 posted by: Baofeng
So I want to warn those who are new to the crypto from such scams.

To be honest the root of all scam here came from giveaways. I can't deny that I almost fell for it but that was during I was still newbie and new to cryptocurrency.

Many ways to avoid these scams.

• Dont prolong discussion on Strangers on any social media platform such as telegram. A lot has been victimized by this inquiry. Just dont reply and block him if he insisting topic especially about funds
• If the giveaway has full of links associated, dont bother to check it. The post might compose professionally but trust me, this is just a disguise. Been there than that.
• Social media is very huge before participating check first if the one posted it is the real one, might fall for a scammer's trap

Thanks for reminding everyone OP.

These's really useful informations, in addition to this, there seems to be another article about cheating via email. Since joining this forum, I have learned more and more about cryptocurrencies. It seems I need to be much more careful  ::)

Thanks It is Useful  ;)
I think it is better to don't talk to anyone that is randomly telling you to invest in something or pursuing you to go to a site or something the best thing to do is to don't talk to them or just block them.
Don't be greedy to earn a profit, We know that it is not easy to earn bitcoin. Also, I think it's fine to participate in giveaways since as long as you don't put money in this giveaways it should be fine. But talking about scammer just don't give your trust to someone so easily, learn information and gain more knowledge first before starting to invest or do something where you could potentially be a scam.

It's easy to make fake tweets or edit everything as long you can edit. That makes it easier for them to scam people. They often use popular Social media to catch people's attention.

To protect yourself, you just need to know the difference between fake or not. Too good to be true. Don't fall for something that doesn't seem true or realistic. Before you believe in big amount giveaways, always check if it's legit or not. Visit their profiles and try gathering info to see if they can be trusted. It's about investigating first before believing. You'll see it on their profiles. If that account is new, then don't trust it. Check some comments on their profile to see what others are saying. If you're smart enough, you won't fall for scams. Doing own research is one of the important things if we want to avoid those kinds of scams.

How to protect yourself from fake giveaways: Don't join giveaways.

Your advices are good. I think if this thread reads any newbie, then at least they won't get into this kind of scam. We will constantly fight against scammers so they can come to the crypto world safely.

Yeah. But not all newbie's know so much about crypto. They believe in what they see. And they also become victims of scammers. We can warn them not to become victims of such scams. So many reputed members of this forum are constantly fighting against scammers.

Some people are very greedy especially newbies who didn't know much about cryptocurrency like they know that you can earn crypto by investing and other things and when they see a giveaway then newbies would surely to join but in reality newbies will become victims of such scams due to greediness.

I just want to add especially to those newbies that don't read the rules. Please don't join in any giveaways in Alternate cryptocurrencies or your account will be ban, Protect your account.

How to know if the giveaways are legit
1. There is a fund assign for a project
2. well known and trusted person of the project.
3. The group of people in a giveaways is not been accuse of fraud or any form.
4. They have successful projects before and no issue encounter.
5. links of the projects don't bring you to a group , or something that add you to group telegram to be a member with no connection to the project.

I think this should looks like , for me
how about you guys,

I think this point number 1 is not trusted. There are many projects who are saying that they already have secured funds and noted on their website but this isnt accurate as transparency should be shown such as wallet of the project to be sure this is real and not just a boost to investors. Ive noticed many projects like these saying that they got $10Million already but in reality its just like a trap for other's to invest too.

Airdrops and bounties are to be check carefully to avoid these scam ways. Either way only you can decide whether to fall on this scheme.

It's easy to say, but hard to put into practice when it comes to human nature that one can hardly refuse something for free. Because of that fact scams are so successful, and unfortunately, no one can prevent inexperienced internet users from being cheated. The key to all is education, but not the one they will get in this forum, but the one they need to get from their parents and in primary school before they become Internet users.

Using social networks is dangerous for those who are unaware of how dangerous this tool is, and I personally don't see what people are looking for in all this connection with others. I actually understand that this is a trend, you have to have Telegram, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and all possible communication apps, but I can live only with Viber and a few e-mails.

I can agree that in some cases it is better to avoid giveaways and even social networks, sometimes the damage is much greater than the benefit.

Or always remember this old adage we have heard so many times in the forum.

"if it's too good to be true then it probably is", and roughly translated to crypto lingo,

"If it sounds like a scam, then it is a scam"

Newbies never change their mindsets, it's the reason behind why most of them end up losing their funds. Aside from that they never learn from mistakes, they have to experience it multiple times before it slaps them the reality that they are losing their funds for nothing. They have open an opportunity wherein scammers can effortlessly get the benefits they wanted, novices need to realize that greediness won't do any good because it is just allowing you to make mistakes on your decisions. Don't let yourself believe anyone because the person you only have to trust is the person in the mirror, which means yourself. Why? because you can't easily determine a persons true intention or even their way of thinking when it comes to money.

While its important to follow official channels, the comments are usually where they lurk. I remembered one time some CEO (forgot who) posted some tweet about "Not giving away ETH" and afterward a verified bot commented with, "But this is an exception! (began the giveaway scam)"

I have been seeing more scammers on telegram there is only one thing to verify these telegram groups or even twitter and facebook, go to their website as you say and make sure it is the correct URL and find their social media usually in the bottom. If you are not sure about the website go to coinmarketcap if the project is listed there you can find some info there even chats, etc.
I use adblocker (Ublock origin) too and anti-phishing protection like cryptonite by metacert.

Fake giveaway from verified accounts fools unsuspecting users easily. I've seen some people adding"Not giving away Crypto"  to their Twitter account. However, this has little to no effect The only way for this to stop completely is for Twitter to ban these accounts used to scam other users. Also users too should be advised to always do due diligence with everything that has to do with money here in the crypto space.

I rarely use Twitter and Telegram because I dont have an active group discussing bounty or ICO. Obviously if you are one of the bounty hunters then I am sure you will be very close to the giveaway and that is already very often found in these two media.

Scammers lurk those who are careless and often target bounty hunters because bounty hunters are considered good targets for prey. They need money and maybe they will be tempted by a few dollars offered by scammers.

I have never participated in a giveaway program, and so far if I get from the two media above namely Telegram and Twitter I will just ignore it and not be interested and I think it is the best effort so far. I think email is also a medium used by scammers to send this type of fraud, can you add it to the list?

At least Twitter have "verified accounts" for account with public interest, not that people bother to check whether blue badge is exist.


Doesn't apply for those who are greedy or desperate :P

You are right. But the newbie doesn't see them. They greedily send the funds without saying anything to anyone. They cannot judge reality. I hope this thread warns them. They will start scrutinizing such scams.

actually simple determine it's a fake or original giveaway. when they ask you to send a sum of money or a coin to get the giveaway it can be sure that it is fake.
Another way is to see whether the account is verified or not, the activity of the account and when the account was created

Once I was asked to sent 0.002 ETH to exchange, to unlock ability to deposit tokens (got them from bounty) and be able to withdraw something else than ETH and BBOD token :)

What do you think, was it a scam exchange? Probably yes, probably no. But I've sent the amount, unlocked deposit option, traded tokens and withdraw them.

I can't even call this exchange trusted. Because seeking funds for a deposit address is not a good rule. This rule can lead to bad thoughts about them. So far I have not seen any exchanges that want funds to generate a deposit address. And if an exchange has such rules, then of course I will ignore them.

PROTECTION is better than prevention. before you make any move to send somebody money or join any campaign, please do your review perfectly. Make sure you are able to confirm the source and how legit the platform is. people are getting scammed on daily basic. Most especially the new ones here in crypto, be carefull out there.

This is quite simple.. some scammers are very good in deceiving other investors and users. There are some who do a legit one at first by giving away real coins as the first part of their giveaway then later on they will try to scam it slowly if the community already trust them. Usually they will make few giveaways to those who are very active and scam one by one new users then those who have been paid will fight for them and scrutinized those who have scammed in which those who fall on the last time will be the only one who got victimized. I saw many of these happened in the past especially during 2018.

That right there is the root of the problem. No legit project will promise such returns on investments. If they do, it's very likely a scam.
Even banks that offer only 1-2% interests on investments don't make such promises. That is why governments/insurance agencies offer insurance up to a certain amount in case of unforeseen problems in the future.

If anyone promises you a 100, 200, 500% return on your investment, report it and find something else.   

I stopped doing giveaways and airdrop with hundreds of fake coins and shit coins my wallet cannot keep anymore because I cannot keep up with having a lot of shitcoins in my wallet, but there are some people who are very good in finding good airdrops or maybe they also have tons of airdrops and just lucky to have these good airdrops.

Yeah. Currently all airdrop and giveaways are fake. Scamming people with these idea, is nothing more than waste of time. Many people have been giving private key while participating airdrop. Many newbies lost their funds. Scammers are still using that old system to scam newbie.

It'll always work. One way or another, these fuckers will always find a way to scam somebody. If they will stop doing it in the crypto world, they'll do it in real life. :)

Whenever I want to join a giveaway/an airdrop and they start asking me for more than just my address, I close the tab. No KYC, no personal info, no seed. If you ask me for any of it, you can also fuck off. I don't want anyone to link my ETH address to my full name/email/other personal data.

Be aware: some giveaways may provide you a shitcoin worth $5 for free, but is your identity worth $5? :)

Yes. Many people do not know these things. They agree to do kyc for an airdrop of little Amount. They do not know who and where they are providing their personal data. Your personal information more important than $5. These personal data scammers can use them for various legal activity. 

If you have to enter your private key, give money or give private details then it's not a giveaway. Trusting your gut feeling helps, not all scammers use the same tactics.

My method of detecting scam giveaways
- Always verify from official channels of the coin
Make sure you join official channels from the official project's website
- Run away from giveaways that requests for funds or sensitive infos
Giveaways like this usually promise big rewards in BTC or ETH or great coins. And at the end of the day, they ask participants to send some amount for verification.

I will rather participate in a genuine giveaway with low reward than waste time on fake giveaways.

There are so many scammers in this virtual world, they will do their best just to steal your money, they have so many ways to do that, so you better be careful and do not easily believe to anyone. They will offer you something, they sometimes do promises about earning money, investments and tradings, they sometimes send you a link, that is what they do scam people. Before entering your personal data on the link that a people give to you, try to do research about the website, there are some websites that looks like so legit but if you search about it, it seems like zero reviews which means it is not legit, you may be scammed on that website.

Always choose someone who you give your trust, for you to avoid being scammed.

The most effective shield of me to protect from shit giveaway is not having greed. I just ignore almost giveaways from most projects and just pay attention to the project I'm interesting. Many people just try to get all giveaways they meet not for any benefit.

This is a classic reason why we as forum users should be on the avoid for people we dont know. Trusting strangers is a bad attempt to protect ourselves from fraud. I think everyone will care and will avoid being a fraud if they can be known from the start, but sometimes there are some people who are trapped and cheated because that person is too good and I think that only too good people are easily fooled by others. If this statement is true, then dont make yourself one of those people who are too good because you will have a greater chance of being deceived.

A giveaway is pretty straightforward.
You apply, you post your wallet address, and you receive something in return. That's it.
It is not a giveaway if you have to complete 10 tasks prior to getting your reward. That is leaning towards a bounty, a payment for a service.

Have you ever been in a supermarket and you see those food stands? They often give customers a chance to taste their cheese or sausages, etc. That is a giveaway. All you have to do is walk by, the people greet you, and offer you some cheese. 

If you have to take part in a questionnaire, watch a 5-min video, download their cheese app, and make one order online before you can taste the cheese, it is no longer a giveaway.     

Just convert that to the digital world and you should be fine.

The best way to avoid fake giveaways is to stay away from them. From my own experience, those giveaways are a big waste of time, in the end you will regret how much time you wasted supporting them. It is better to create value helping members here answering their questions if you have the experience or knowledge.

Don't be their next victim, avoid bounties or giveaways. You won't earn that much money. If you have in mind the idea that time will bring value to those useless tokens/coins, you better forget that.

You need to learn how to determine the difference between the real and fake giveaways, but you also need to understand that there's no people who will give free btc that he will not benefit it himself. Also not all celebrities do understand what bitcoin is and not all famous personalities do have a prior knowledge towards how bitcoin works in the market. Don't easily trust those legit accounts because there's a possibility that their account has been hacked by those hackers and they are showing scams to fool people.

Lol, are you serious about that? Your point is correct but how an individual knows if the giveaways are legit or not, well as a bitcoiner who holds not much money, we are always looking for giveaways, it is an opportunity so we will always grab it whenever we can. We really want to avoid these fake giveaways but the thing here is that it is hard for us to identify whether it is legit or not, as what the OP's says, we should always look for the official websites or announcement if they have posted the giveaways, if you see it on their posts then definitely it is legit.

The first thing that we can check if that giveaway is very good to be true that will be the sign to end as a scam because the giveaways will offer a big reward to each participant.
If the giveaways need you to send the money to their wallet before you can get the reward, that will be another sign for you to get another scam giveaways.
That is the beginning of the fake giveaways, and I am sure there are many more lists that we should always avoid because the giveaways will use an attractive message to attract more people to joined with them.
We can skip that giveaway, and never joined with them because we will not get any reward, and even we will lose the money that we send to them.

People say that "There's Always Free Cheese In A Mousetrap". Same is with giveaways. If they sound to good and easy, then they are 100% fake. If they ask to sign here, follow this, join that, retweet this and fill this form - this is also a fake one. They are just trying to hide behind all this complexity and in the you will either get nothing or will be asked to pass kyc.

Not entering giveaways is the method I typically prefer. Although if you trust the entity running the giveaway it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Absence is always the best way to stay away or avoid a thing but then, absence requires you to be knowledgeable about that thing that requires you avoiding them else, how then can you tell what to avoid if it happens that your ignorant of it and the dangers that follows it...?
It's quite an elaborate post and I enjoy the fact that, it points out direct individual steps you can take to protect yourself against these scam schemes. I'm sure to try that out anyway but then, why the heck should we even cultivate the ideas of giveaways. Besides, nothing really comes free if you look at it objectively. Before you know it, your being asked to complete a task and if we know giveaways always comes with some level of discomfort, it's best we just avoid them.

Informative readings are always welcome!
__
We must start to stop wanting to take users "like kindergarten children", how many warnings of this type exist in the forum and on the Internet (!?)


So, there are examples of traps, that if you fall there, you need to go to a psychologist, because you have common sense problems.

I have just seen this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5224817.0

I think it must be the approach, the new approach; that if it is necessary to point out and say with first and last names which projects are scams, but when this exists, we cannot continue to be general with these social platforms, because there are many people doing it well and giving opportunities.
You and I understand it, but someone who is newcomer, you can understand that there is nothing good to look for.


Epitome:
- without a doubt there are people in those niches creating healthy and valid opportunities, I guarantee you they are more, than these stupid fool-hunting projects.

- We must have to look for good projects and also give them cavity in the positive part. Search for users, websites that are oriented in the review of projects related to the cryptographic world that make reviews and become reliable sources of consultation.

- No more propaganda for the "popular" Exchange and until when "Eloson Mocho*," etc.
Speak badly of the adversary, is ads for free!

- Let's look for the glow in the dark of these social networks, which are formats used to promote, but also to generate a profit in both parts.


In conclusion, let's stop saying that Telegram, Twitter and any social network is a farm of traps, that is easy, rescue the "good" that is there, is a new better guide, for any newbie, because the villain exist in so many places that only an real fool ignores so many signals.

---

---

Important:
Everyone without exception, even the most expert can sometimes ignore the signal, so in some way, we are all included.
This theme of cheating is so important that experience is what matters the least, scams are made for all types of users.
* It is not an error it is intentional, everyone knows what the real name is.
__

People are easily be lured by free money schemes, they think that those are legit and people are willing to send free money.

They should understand that there's no easy money in this world and you need to work and take actions in order for you to help yourself grow and survive.

Work hard and do an effort because money will not instantly or automatically will go to you. Patience and hardwork pays off in this life full of struggles and opportunities. Don't wait for a fake giveaways, fake schemes, and etc. If you have more questions regarding this just visit more topics related to scams.

Indeed. Never let your greediness in earning free money fool you because the best way to protect yourself from fake giveaways is only by staying away from them. It is really not that hard to ignore them, even you used social media platforms like Twitter and Telegram and you see these kind fake giveaways or fake schemes.

The best way to avoid fake giveaways maybe just does not join giveaways at all. Joining a giveaway at this time doesn't really give you a high profit most of the time. But we could notice a lot of legit giveaways like for example from Binance that actually do big giveaways. Anybody could just do a giveaway at any social media platform so when it doesn't come from the legitimate website or pages do not trust it at all. I mean on twitter we could identity legit accounts. One more thing is giveaways do not require any amount at all so when someone is asking for funds or money just don't fall in it because it is obviously a scam.

Throughout 2020 until now, I can ensure that I am never again involved in various giveaways program on telegram, twitter, facebook and others. I feel like telegram has been a scammers paradise for a long time and I think people already know a lot about it. Ignoring everything about the giveaway is the best way to avoid scams on my part. I wouldn't bother testing too far each time a giveaway exists although some of them can be verified as legitimate. Several times I was put in a telegram group that I didn't want, usually I would report the group if there were a lot of suspicious link there.

Control your mindset, nothing is free, if you can have this in your mind you won't even hunt for free giveaways in the first place, when you come across them you will ignore them with no issue, instead I recommend hunting for airdrops since they requires your social media accounts to spread awareness for their projects, that's still something

Lol, all these giveaways makes make smile when I come across then mostly on Twitter, and it's shocking that people still fall for such scams, this isn't one of the way I've lose money in crypto space and it's never going to be because I don't believe in free things.

Like what @Smartvirus mentioned, you have to remain vigilant and responsible every single time.

Remember that there are no free things in this world- everything has a price. If something is given free, expect that it has something to be returned as well. Given the fact that there are lots of fake giveaways circulating around various social media platforms, those type of notices should spark a red flag against them. Never believe giveaways unless you can accurately tell (by doing research, etc.) that what they do is genuine.

The safest way to not fall victim of these scams in the name of giveaways is to totally avoid it completely. Majority of these giveaways will end up scamming you if you are not careful.
Some may even request that you send them token so they can send your rewards, while others will request for your seed phrase.

Some people still fall with this kind of fake giveaway most of the time I see a giveaway and make them follow to Twitter and say that they are giving away a large amount of tokens and there's an instruction to follow them and once they get a lot of followers they make a post that you won in their giveaway and by that there's a link you need to visit if you make a proceed with this it causes to lose your wallet and all of the assets included. It is already 2022 and technology and the internet is one of the known things so being literate with this is a good thing upon learning crypto to prevent getting in with those scams.

For me, the simplest way to protect yourself on any giveaway is to avoid joining on any of it. I lost already my interest on joining with this kind of marketing scheme due to the risk of joining fake giveaway and also the chance of winning on this contest is very slim due to the fact that many user are joining and using bots to cheat the result. It’s not worthy the risk for a slim chance of winning. For now I’m only joining on exchange giveaways which only requires a certain trading volume to qualified in the contest unlike giveaways on social media that requires to fill up form and do task just to get an entry.

Most fraudulent airdrops have the goal of forcing you to join your wallet to their site after you are unable to sell the scam coin on DEX. Thus, you simply sign a permission to debit all your coins from your wallet. Therefore, do not forget about the rule, do not connect your wallet to unknown sites.

IMHO, the best way is to not sign up for these in the first place.  Problem is people want free stuff and the scammers know this and prey upon it, leading to successful exploits.  Remember, everything comes with a cost.

Locking to many phone, making people to no the password  you use to locking, that may cause to scam.

Thanks bro for all things you said, because I am a victim of all. The amount of money I normally see seduce me to engage myself. Upon the loss of money, I keep saying that one day I will cash out, not knowing that they are scammers I have lost a lot in the hands of scammer. Thanks this will be the bus stop.

There is no shame in making mistakes and everyone makes them. But every mistake should teach you something and make you smarter, more cautious, and more knowledgeable The days of good airdrops are gone. Even if you receive some tokens that will eventually be listed on an exchange, the airdropped amount will be insignificant and you won't be able to sell them. $1 or $2 of some token will cost you more in transaction fees to move them to an exchange the way the Ethereum network has been running the last couple of years. Not to mention trading fees, minimum trading amounts, and withdrawal fees later on. 

I have checked the website:https://bit555.io/
and that is a perfect clone, i would say it's guarantee 100% the owner of bc.game the one who create the clone.

If you try to play live casino and using their free game coin, the error still say: "website do not support JB" ... while their ingame coin is "GC"

Unless bc.game whitelabeling their casino? for 100% the same owner

Most legit advise. Since my starting in crypto, I have joined countless giveaways, they have only given me $2-$5 here and there. Even legit giveaways require several tasks to be completed just to be eligible and you earn pennies.