Bitcoin Forum

Now that the crypto market is on an up trend, it is easy to assume that there are a lot of new users coming to the crypto market. The activities of scammers are increasing by competing with the market. And by exploiting this state of the market, scammers are looking for ways to trap newcomers to every step.

The most commonly used method by scammers today is to create phishing websites fake giveaway/ airdrop. This allows scammers to easily scam new crypto users. These scams are far more dangerous than the fake giveaway of the rules for sending funds. Because once a victim sent money of a scam, people realize that he has been cheated. And there is no risk to the rest of their wallet funds. So he will not make such a mistake second time. But these Private key theft scams are very risky in this case. Because if a crypto user gives the private key of their hodl fund wallet to join this airdrop, then his entire fund will be taken by the scammers.Then there is nothing left for them to do, they face huge losses due to their own mistakes and greed.

Because there is a misconception among the newcomers that it is possible to make a quick profit from crypto. So they participated in everything in the hope of a quick profit, and the scammers continue to exploit this greed of the newcomers. So our responsibility is to keep newcomers away from such scams, to give them accurate information about crypto. I think the method that scammers are currently using to steal private keys should be discussed in detail. So I am creating this thread. I'm trying to discuss in detail, using Ocean's fake airdrop website as an example.



https://i.ibb.co/gth3wpV/ocean-1.png

The first page contains a detailed discussion of their purpose. This page discusses as many tempting offers as possible, making people more interested in this airdrop of scammers. They put more information on this page about the fund hold in the wallet.

https://i.ibb.co/GT16Nkd/ocean-2.png

This page is designed to collect information about the wallet address and the number of funds held in that address. The second step is to collect such general information. After providing this information, their real purpose will be understood in the next step.

https://i.ibb.co/gd7qBy7/ocean-3.png
https://i.ibb.co/56QLcdR/ocean-4.png

This page is for the most important scammers as well as crypto users. Because if the crypto users provide the information that the scammers want on this page, they will lose all the funds in their wallet. They will force you differently to send your wallet confidential information to them. Scammers have created this website only for this page.

https://i.ibb.co/GRD8TZX/ocean-5.png

And here is some information about the wallet. They want the private key of these wallets from you. So you have to be careful at every step in the crypto world.


The private key of your wallet is a very secret thing not to share it with anyone. It is very important to know well about those things before investing in anything. You don't have to provide a private key to get the official airdrop, the main purpose of those who say to provide your private key is to gain access to your wallet. So be smart yourself and fu** the scammers.

People that know nothing about bitcoin are supposed to be using bitcoin wallet, normally a person that fall for this type of obvious scam is a little foolish, please, permit me to use that word, but although anything can happen. I think the requisite to using a wallet is to know that private key should be personal and should not be disclosed to anyone, that it can be used by another person to access the wallet to hijack all or part of the bitcoin stored on it.

Using bitcoin and bitcoin wallet is easy, but the truth to be known about bitcoin before using it at all. Truth like not disclosing your private key to anyone.

One of the most basic scamming scheme on this market where airdrops, giveaways and other promotions that just masking out to be legit but
in the end they do really try to pull out some scamming attempt for them to lure in people to input their private keys.For people who doesnt have
much knowledge about on how important their private key is will most like to be victimized by this one.. Someone shouldnt really be giving out
these sensitive information because once a certain person do have these keys then they do have the full access into your wallet.Its just common sense.

It is a very old ploy and its idea was developed by creating wallets and promoting it as safe.

Yes, they are not only targetting btc but also the small amount of crypto you had in eth wallet or in an online wallet usually eth. The new comers are always their target because they are new and most of them are get hype whenever they receive a token giving the promise to earn big in it then the said will going to believe in it in which it will disclose the the information to be provided by the scammers fake site. This is usually the way scammer work so keeping always aware the members here in the forum especially the newbie is a good way to prevent them from getting scam.

I remember the days where the airdrops are rampant here which other scammers use this just to get the private keys of careless users, many of them succeed to penetrate and get the PK and get many $ for that scheme before. But now this act is lessen up and the most common thing we can see is the airdrops and giveaways by certain developers and dump suddenly after they hype and bought by the traders.

Things to remember to be safe in this kind of scheme

Airdrop only needs wallet address - asking for private keys is 100 % scam
Asking fee's to be able to send your token to you are one way to scam
personal message pretending that they are VP or head of the team, no one in the right mind will send personal messages especially if he is the president VP or head of the development.
No website, no team, no projects, remember contract address can be copied and pretends it's their coin, I've seen this in some airdrops after they get what they want they will vanish.

I had received similar message for stellar airdrop many moons ago, everything seemed legit including email, finally when they asked for private key my brain lighten up. Not that I was holding any xlm but still whenever anything asks for your private key, it's likely to be a scam.

Back in days, in 2018 (?), there are many scam forks or clones of Ethereum. Those scammers try to create many clones of Ethereum, Ethereum Dark, Ethereum Classic Vision, .... and to claim those clone coins, people have to waive their mnemonic seeds. Metamask reacted and mark all of clone coins that require seeds to claim as scam.

Community helped to report scam clone coins. [ANN] [ETCV] Ethereum Classic Vision | Fork 3:1 of Ethereum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5089443.0)

it is happening a lot less now because ever since the ICO scam started dying a couple of years ago and all the tokens and the altcoins also started dumping hard, the majority of newbies who were then in huge losses left the market with something between 10 to 20% of their capital. the remaining people weren't such idiots to believe such obvious schemes so these methods stopped being successful.

the funny thing is that when the shitcoin shitshow starts up again (which i think it will between 6 to 12 months from now) we will see a lot of newbies come in who get scammed by those altcoins and these obvious scammers alike.

Currently this method is still used mostly by sending bulk private messages directly to email and telegram messages. Fraudsters know that promoting it publicly will be annoyed with warning reviews and risk the site being reported more and going down faster.

I received a lot of these airdrop messages over the past 2 months in the spam folder, mostly the 2nd to Xth uniswap airdrops. And it only consists of 1 phishing page using the Amazon website service (AWS)

If you want to really f**k scammers, then it's not enough just not to fall into the traps they have set. In order to f**k them, you need to create some kind of counter algorithm that will lure the scammer into your own trap and compromise his in accordance with your personal scenario.

And this is not as easy as it seems. Most beginners still have a huge chance of losing their money, not to mention even punishing the scammers.

Yeah at this time the ICO scam is getting bigger where the scamer is doing this seriously and making money. Many newbies who just entered have a loss and they leave because they have been tricked and don't believe it, after a long time now they definitely come back again and it's all because of developments crypto that is getting faster and also the token hype that is being created will also be an attraction for beginners to come back again.
Well here the scamer will continue to watch how to trap the victim with what they make to get their private key, therefore their awareness is very important for us to save it.

Two ways that are currently usually done by scammers, besides sent a phishing link via email
1. Ask to give PK whose wallet must have a balance
2. Send some funds to the scammer's wallet
Always remember Private Keys is confidential info, if need to send funds first to get airdrops, then you can be sure it's a scammer work.

As far as I know, and I think it is what realy it should be, is that no one should input their private keys on any other websites, applications, or any plaforms except your wallet.
If you happen to enter the key on that site or plaforms like that who's asking for your private keys or seeds, your wallet will be more likely be compromised sooner or later.

Keep those private keys and seeds to yourself, and never share them to anyone specially anyone on cyberspace, unless you really trust the person(e.g. family).

I also found same airdrop last day what's even more frightening is that he uses a well-known decentralized exchange that actually issued free tokens back then to it's users.

And there is  a humor a second proposed   airdrop will be given away to users of unisswap last day  but they failed to get the enough vote  . And this  phising website came from no where offer an airdop but asking for your keys or mnemonic phrase to get it which is a websites that will steal your keys .
https://i.ibb.co/X8Xbjh5/Screenshot-20201104-162624.png (https://ibb.co/X8Xbjh5)

Unfortunately it already started few months ago, fueled by DeFi and greed. Funny thing, bunch of those that lost money during ICO craze are investing again in similarly risky things like they didn't learn anything, and that brought even more newbies who probably read stories about x1000 returns in couple of month. For them slowly acquiring BTC is too conservative, they want profit now.

After all, there is an endless supply of naive people, like in that old saying "there's a sucker born every minute".

Although ICO is dying but there are still few running, but there are changes and now it has change to DEFI scams which is currently happening right now that's why it's best for people to not easily believe on new technology or anything that promise to change everything especially when they say they can change your life and earn with the platform since most of them are scams.

This scheme is already common and I’ve seen those fake airdrops doing that from time to time. When I see an entry that requires “private key” to claim the airdrop, it’s a freaking scam. Until now, newbies and beginners in the crypto industry are prone to “shiny figure syndrome” when they see the reward for completing the airdrop without questioning its legitimacy.

And the sad reality is that it’s hard stopping them from getting victimized. We can only educate or give them advice, but we cannot really control them because of the “reward” that they see without checking if it’s legit or scam. 

I'm sure they know the risk already about the DEFI but some think that they will last longer the same when ICO introduce here but suddenly the ending is the same where many people still lose their money so better this one will be the lesson for people on not even think about investing on tokens who seek money for investors.

Yeah, this information really is a huge help to me as a biginner, all thanks to you, but do we have a way or a relevant solution to stop this scamming scheme?

We can't stop these scamming schemes because greedy people will always find their ways to scam other people. But for now, the best we can do to ensure the safety of our funds is to raise awareness of how the scam works in varied forms. As scams constantly increasing, we should be vigilant because a defrauder is using different marketing strategies to draw attention. In such an instance, we should not easily assume a homonymous website or a project conducts a legitimate airdrop or giveaway. Some of those are a phishing website, which is a method of a defrauder to steal your personal data. Educate yourself by reading this, it will guide you in identifying a phishing website.

Link: [GUIDE] Use this for identifying Scam/Phishing Websites & Exchanges in Crypto (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5122515.0)

Also, we can conduct an investigation on their website and social media platforms if there’s a precise announcement. Protect yourself by checking this out, it's an informative post that discussed how we can avoid fake giveaways.

Link: How to protect yourself from fake giveaways. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5222603.0)

Private keys and mnemonic phrases are the new targets of the hackers and is crazy to see every day a new method that hackers implement to get access to this data. So, we should give a warning to all the users, and let them know the risk of exposing our keys.

This kind of airdrops represents an enormus risk, but this problem doesn't comes only with airdrops, the hackers has multiple methods to get our mnemonic phrase. So, be careful and play it smart.

There is no valid explanation by any developers that you should give them your private key, you do not know Cryptocurrency and decentralization if you do not know this.
There are two guides and mantra that every investors should know, and that is not your key not your coins and only invest what you can afford to lose, these are the two things that people should make a mantra.

I very often encounter and get airdrop email that goes to SPAM Email. This type of scammer trap by using Claim Airdrop has hurt many people and managed to retrieve someone's private key. When you encounter an airdrop that asks for a private key or asks to send funds first, you need to be aware of it, because that is a characteristic of a scammer. Don't be tempted by the amount of airdrop claimed, you must be more vigilant.

The point is, don't give your private key and memory phrase to other people unless you know yourself if they ask for some kind of airdrop, then of course you have to be aware that we are suspicious of what they have asked for. Damn they always target people not knowing about this.

I know this is a big risk, even getting hit in this crazy trap I don't want many people to complain because they have become victims for us, their awareness is very important not to be tempted by what they have to claim in the airdrop.

Never you try to sign message anyhow, especially when it comes to #defi. A lot of scammers out there have been stealing other people's fund with just simple trick to gain access into their private owned wallet. A situation where You would be ask to "click to claim" and before you know it, you'd get redirected to a page where you'd be ask to sign a message to claim airdrop.

Although, very few are real though but you have to go through proper channels by running a thorough check on each of their accounts like Twitter, website etc. However, you don't just scroll around their website without running a proper check on whitepaper or litepaper.

I've once been dealt with, so I wouldn't like it if anybody from on here gets whipped.

Be safe out there! ✌️

Such fake airdrop links are spread by scammers to crypto users using email, twitter, youtube etc. They try to spread these scams using new ways everyday. And they certainly get the victim, because there are lots of crypto users who are so greedy they don’t want to miss any opportunity.

Crypto users who are aware of such scams do not fall into this trap. But the problem is that we have to work to warn new users who are not familiar with these scams.

That's why you shouldn't disclose any information about yourself on the internet especially your email. You'll notice that random messages will pop up on your email and multiple scam giveaways and fake airdrops are in there. I don't know where they got info on our emails, maybe through the newsletter of cryptocurrency. So it's better to be aware always if you're a beginner in the crypto world because many scammers will take your lack of knowledge as an advantage to get their personal desires.

Proper checking of social media accounts, that's one of the basic things that should've done to avoid being scammed. Some are just faking their info so be careful about every message you're receiving, there are a bunch of those in the crypto community.

It is so bad that these things do happen. That means, we are not even safe. I thought this was going to be a safe zone but it's evidently not from the various scam related articles I've read so far. It also points out a fact that, your security is always in your hands until you give them off so, that's your (our) advantage.
Besides, why would one risk what he or she has in his account by giving out details for a token that is yet to have any value of it could be valued at all.

When you see this on your computer, it's already obvious or at least sus that this is a scam website.

I think no one in the right mind would be going to put their wallet private key just for a sketchy giveaway like this, I mean you can't risk it especially when you have a high amount of investment in your wallet.

Remember that there is no website that is gonna required you to put your private key especially in a giveaway, I mean there are some legit websites but don't do it for a giveaway.

Having the same thought. Fortunately, it never happened to me, and for sure I won't fall for it but I am afraid for the newbies who are only getting started because some of them might not have an idea or clue that they shouldn't share their keys with anyone especially on a sketchy website. That is why I will recommend for newbies that if happens they encounter this kind of Airdrop they should be wary and get away from it because there's no doubt that this is definitely a scam. Upon joining Airdrop, you can provide your wallet address but don't ever give your private keys.

I don't even understand why someone would share their private keys to anyone, isn't it as important as your bank account pin number or even your social media password? It's just so impossible to not see it like that specially if we are talking about money. Why would someone believe anything that requires you to share your personal account for just a few coins, maybe I would never understand cause even though you are newbie, it's basic common sense.

But unfortunately, there are still those people who are falling into these silly scams. I don't want to blame the victims but you know, it still feels silly, I hope life would not fuck them around cause there are thousands of things that will deceive them in the real world .

Experienced people like you don't fall into these traps, these traps are only made for newbies. There are many crypto users who face these scams because they do not know the proper use of private key. When the market is on an up trend, a lot of new crypto users come to the crypto world. And taking advantage of their inexperience, scammers want to scam them.

So just because you haven't been the victim of such a scam doesn't mean that no one else has. We are trying to warn everyone.

Scammers are becoming more bold and clever that they use the most bizarre way to steal people's information. Some newbie will fall for this, especially those who are not aware to never give your private key or mnemonic phrase no matter what.

 People really need to be careful as some may get excited and miss the danger there. Always verify the legitimacy of airdrop before participating and always know that if they are asking you for private keys then it's a scam. If you have to send them fund to receive airdrop then it's a scam. If it's too good to be true then it definitely is.

Let's be vigilant out there, scammers are graduating to another level.

I remember there is an exchange that required you to put your private key in order to trade in that exchange, I don't remember the name of the exchange but I need to sell the token that I got from the bounty.

The token can only be sell in that exchange so I have no choice but to put the private key from the MEW wallet but it turns out to be a legit exchange. So I guess there is some website that would require you a private key but there are only a few that are legitimate.

The worst part is that this scam is so easy for scammers. It requires no work, no coding, nothing. Can be created in a couple of hours !

Well newbies need to know how important their private keys are, they are meant to be hidden and not shared with anyone else even if they promise to give you something in return, some newbies just create wallets this days and without fully understanding what their private key stands for, it's still happening because they failed to learn first before trying to earn

Obviously they are targeting newbies who cannot moderate their greed, the first thing that you learn when you embrace the teaching of Cryptocurrency is how to protect your private key and your coin and the advice not your coin not your key, is the one that always stand up,
now if you are feeding scammers because of your ignorant then the blame is on you, and you deserve to be scam.

Airdrop hunters should stop been greedy as well, how can a project asked for your private keys and you just give it up like that when youve been warned when creating the wallet that you shouldn't share with anyone else? Many still don't understand that private keys should be safeguard like their bank account details

They are targeting new members of this forum, they will not get anything from old members here because they are exposed and discussed here, but for newbies who just got in in this technology, they are a willing victim because they are not aware on how scammers works, we have seen so many newbies complaints in the scam section, they are vulnerable for lack of knowledge.

I can't believe that people are falling for this

1. If you give away your private keys you are breaking the crypto safety rules already, private keys aren't meant to be shared

2. Airdrops are supposed to be 100% free, if any Airdrops ask for your private keys or ask you to make deposits they are 100% pure scam

Stop greedy following lots of airdrops without knowing the legitimacy of airdrops, lots of fake airdrops faking ticker tokens from top projects. Fake airdrop allows you to ask for a private key without you realizing it reflexively gives it, that's a case that has happened before asking everyone to be careful to join the airdrop program.

i don't think people still fall for this kind of scams, if only they used their brains before doing anything, it's so obvious that you should never share
your private key with anyone, but sadly some people who are new to crypto world might fall for this BS.

In the past scammers have been using the name of airdrop with the private key in the wallet and everyone should be careful if they have scammed don't fall into the trap of such a scammer for the second time. No matter what we do no one ever asks for personal information you should also not share personal information with anyone to protect your wallet sadly, there are still many people who give up their personal key when it comes to earning more in which they lose everything in the case of newcomers it is more risky.

You will just laugh at this attempt if you know and fully understand that your private is something that you only you own, and your mantra is not your key not your coin, they can use all the methods they can think as long as you not giving out your private key and your credentials, you are going to be safe.

Newbies don't ever want to learn that's why scammers are taking advantage of them successfully, newbies are always in rush to make money and they don't use their heads most times, private keys are called private because it's never meant to be shared with any one because just for unreal Airdrops tokens they are ready to let go.

When you encounter an airdrop that asks for a private key or asks to send funds first, you need to be aware of it. The 90% of them are fake.
Now scamer create giveaway and scam people they target any coin.

Every airdrop that ask for your private keys are examples of hacking attempt. Dont give your privatekeys even they promise that they will give you big amount of money. But i think every person on crypto knows that already, that when an airdrop ask for private keys or anything that you used to create your wallet is a scam attempt.

They will never ask for the private key of your wallet to get any original airdrop. It feels a little safer to see cautious newcomers like you, because most newbie can’t control themselves in their new crypto journey. They make huge losses from the idea of ​​making a profit in various ways. Scammers never stop their scamming activities, so be careful that scammers do not succeed in their purpose.

I hardly come across scam Airdrops because I do research before signing up for any airdrop campaigns, majority don't do this today, they blindly join anything that is willing to give them something in return, there are legit airdrop source online but people don't do research anymore

I've seen this type of trick locally, meaning in my very own country scammers are using this trick to steal private keys, newbies are the ones who need to be careful because they don't always want to learn, they are always eager to make some money unwisely

LOL the example looks like the scammers are assuring that those who participate in the airdrop do have 1ETH on their wallet.

This is why I always tell my sister not to give away his private key if someone or a website ask for it. Some people will actually think because the project popular then it's okay to send their privatekey. IF PayPal asks for a private key, I may not even give it to them.

Since scammers use the name of popular project to create fake giveaway websites, those who are inexperienced here have very little knowledge about such scams, they get confused in this situation. So they do not think much of their wallet important information private key such fake website. You know about scams like this, so you can warn your family members too.

a newbie who just wants to get a taste of quick profits is sure to fall into a trap like this...
Your wallet does not belong to you anymore when you hand over your 'private key' to someone else or it leaks to someone else. This is the reason why we are all obliged to store our 'private key' in the safest and most hidden place.

Though old ploy but there are still more victims of this ploy, some similar messages where sent to me few years back and becasue of my newbie knowledge into the technology i gave out my private key which resulted in mopping-up of my coins then. We're fortunate to be here were information about the technology is/are shared freely, back then nothing of such was in place, i mean to newcomers (those who doesn't know here in the first place). If there's anything i have gained in the past; is my involvement in Bitcointalk.

Who da heck goes around to do airdrops in this present date. Managing through BOUNTIES social media tasks is much better. I know most forum user's might have already fallen to this trick.

Many people consider Airdrop as free money, so people participate in various airdrop in the hope of getting something for free. But scammers take advantage of people’s interests here, they create different types of fake airdrop websites and promote them using different media.

So we should not think that any crypto user no longer participates in airdrop, there are still many users who easily fall into such traps.

Right, There are still straight up newbies who just discovered cryptocurrency by signing up or joining airdrop because they hear that it has free money in it. Airdrop might be tempting but scammers are milking the airdrop scene as much as possible.

We don't know, there might be a complete newbie that heard this airdrop from someone and bought 1 ETH for the sake of this airdrop  ::)

It is possible. Lots of scammers around, it's hard for a newbie to control himself. With scammers everywhere, newbies often believe the wrong information and fall into such traps. So those who follow this BitcoinTalk community can protect themselves from such scams, because there are many members who exopse all kind of scams to warn everyone.

I have recently encountered a similar scheme in which they are trying to steal private keys of hardworking bounty hunters. Their strategy is that they are creating a “drama” that someone is using my Bitcointalk details without permission to enter the bounty, and it requires us to fill up the form to prove that we are the true owners of that Ethereum address and other information.

However, I did filled up the form with my funny details! XD

https://i.imgur.com/P3RygRz.jpg

Thanks for the info. Geez these scammers are getting better by the day. But then again who's falling for these scams? I remember the heist on Instagram a couple of months back. "Send 1btc and I will double it". A lot of newbies in the crypto space fell for it and lost their money

Yes i got scam in 2018 by a Airdrop program this Airdrop is scam.

I loss my 50$

Therefore i say

Don't give your private keey to Anybody Any Airdrop need your keey means this Airdrop is scam 100%

Fool are those that gives up their private keys or recovery seed all in the name of Airdrops, how much can a airdrop worth that can make you give up your keys? You are warned when opening a new wallet that you must keep your private keys and never shared with anyone, newbies that do such are too foolish