Bitcoin Forum

The way things are going, there are a lot of cryptocurrency scams going on right now, and if you're not careful, you might end up being a victim of one. As cryptocurrency grows in popularity, more people are trying to scam it, and most of them are going after newbies who they believe don't know much about cryptocurrency or are new so they can easily scam them.
As a newcomer to Bitcointalk, I feel this post will help everyone from falling victim to a bitcoin scam, such as the ones listed below.
1. If the website you're visiting isn't secure, I believe you should avoid it because your personal information may not be safe there, potentially resulting in the loss of assets or funds.
2. You receive a Gmail informing you that you have been awarded a coin and that you should claim the reward; however, you should never do so if the Gmail comes from an unknown source. Avoid using Gmail if it is not from a official website.
3. If you are asked or invited to participate in an initial coin offering (ICO) with an unknown investor, you should be wary.
4. Avoid applications that ask for your private key or password if the app isn't from a reputable source or the link to the app is not from their main website.
5. You should always avoid unnecessary giveaways and make sure you do your own research before applying for any airdrop to ensure the airdrop is legitimate and not a scam. You should also avoid people who ask you to send a coin and they will double it for you in return.
I feel these are just a few warnings, and I believe there are many more that others should write about, and you can write about your own experiences to prevent people from falling for scams.

I've noticed a lot of people falling for scams by searching things crypto related on places like Google and clicking ads that could scam them.

I've seen a lot of cases where someone tells a person they won a giveaway but require them to send a deposit to a site to withdraw it - which might seem like an obvious scam but a lot of people are not accustomed to how to register a site etc and think it's only legitimate organisations.

There are also some Scams that using nearly the same Name of the original page like i have seen 2 days ago from Bitstamp !
Bitstamp has done some kind of post on Facebook and the next post was also from Bitstämp that they doing some kind of giveaway.
You just have to send 0.001 or 0.01 to receive the double on that what you are have deposited to the adress.
Watch out how the names are written.

Hi,
Thank you for the highlight as I am totally new on this. I am out of job while helping my ex colleague to market machinable glass ceramic in part time basis. It is a unique material and market is limited. I have more time to look for other option. Bitcoin may be a good option.

The thing is, they are actually not going after newbies per se, I'd not like newcomers in the network to have the erroneous perception that they are basically the target of scammers, they are after crypto users who are allured by "offers that look too good to be true", what that means is that, it's greedy individuals that are the main target for scammers, and anyone can be greedy, newcomer, old timer etc, thus users should know when something looks absolutely "too good to be true", then learn the operations of scammers and generally develop their knowledge of crypto, but mind you that someone who is in the network just basically to "get rich quick" would ignore all this, cause they are only motivated by avarice and as such every thing would then look like an opportunity to make quick returns, and thus will lead to the loss of their funds.

On axie infinity, a lot has been victimized by the use of Google by searching the website and eventually clicked an ads that leads to a scammer site. Pity those got hacked.

From how to claim eben a newbie should think rationally why would you need to pay for something you win and the best therr is why would you win if you dont join any contest. Beginners should not be sway by this cause is literally prone to scam one.

Press enter twice after you make your point, to make it easier to read.

They're not actually going after just newbie but everyone in the space with ignorance, they just need to tap into the greed in you and make a killing. If we're to outline the tricks used by the scammers, they are numerous to mention but most or all resolved round the greed factor. Keep that in check and you would have avoided 90% of the scams tricks used by this scammers.

When you get contacted for an investment or help resolve a problem and in return to gets impressive compensation, you should just know you're been tricked. Be very sceptical about everything and that'll help secure you from falling victims to the scams because the scammers are actually good at making their tricks very convincing.

If you have interest in participate in the trends, go after the technology and not the hyped projects. Don't follow the crowd, and most importantly not everything is worth participating in that get introduced to the community, consider them distraction because that's exactly what they're.

I completely agree that not only newbies are the bait of scammers. People who are in great need of money fall into deception, it happens that depression encourages people to take risks. The second part of people is greedy and stupid people who believe that someone will give them something in life.
If among newcomers there are people who believe in their prize from the Internet, think about whether there are people in your environment who won something or were able to get rich quickly? For the most part, you will remember the people who were deceived by scammers, and not vice versa. Nothing is free on the internet.
Check sites on the date of creation, if it was created recently, this is a direct bait of scammers. And whether you will be their victim depends only on you.

Please let me add this great thread from you. I face some of new modus nowadays like :

1. airdrop unknown tokens to your wallet without you're being engaged with those projects. Usually, they will send a big amount of tokens and deceive you to believe that it has a great value of money. Then they will encourage you to claim it through their website, connect your wallet to it, unlock it and BAM! all the tokens you have will be gone

2. Many scammers roaming in telegram notify that they don't know how to access their wallet, (especially trust wallet). They're telling people their seeds/private key to help them to access it and then the same old song if you help them, your assets are gone too.

3.  When you're asking assistance from some projects in their telegram group, scammers compete with attending your PM and pretend to help you as admins. Don't ever get screwed by them! check twice, trice, fourth, and so on their user ID, not their name then match it with the real admin. After that, ask the admin to ban them, you also can report and ban them,

these are just a little additional info about scamming, I hope it's helping,

Yes that's true they are not only after newbies alone they just want to scam so anybody can fall victim. But what I believe is that they are particularly after newbies because they believe those are the people that can easily be convinced. I believe if you have stayed long in bitcoin talk here you should already have all this experience and their trick won't really work, but if you are new you are likely to fall for it easily. That's and that's just what I think is just from my own observation and perception!!!

Got one scammer attempting to lead me into their phishing site. I remember it was one of the airdrops I joined to test how would it go.
Turns out they attempted to convince me that I am into their legitimate copy-pasted MEW site, because that is what I usually use when I hold tokens from some ICO back in the days.
I reported the site from their web hosting service and it got taken down immediately. The thread here was gone though.

As cryptocurrencies becomes more and more pervasive, maybe the patterns in bank account scams would be copied in crypto field.
such as

• give you a fake QR code to scan. by PS, many information, esp, QR code contained in a picture, can be altered without noticed
• if your password of cryptocurrency is on your phone or any hot wallet,watch out!
• risky links. saying that your asset in a certain exchange is risky and you should click that link for protection

I mentioned just a few, just be careful when transforming asset, do not fall for convenience or any 'lucky' illusions.

Any one can be a victim of this scammers plot. The device strong techniques daily on how to deprive crypto investors from their coins. Been security concious should be everyone's business because this looters aren't giving up most times I wonder the joy the derive depriving others of their hard earned labor instead of using that energy to make something tangible of their time and resource

Be wary of ads that lead you to phishing websites. There are some advertisements that clone exchange websites. Be sure to bookmark the correct link, and don’t browse similar-looking websites.
Chrome extension applications such as Mwtamask can also avoid phishing websites.
https://i.loli.net/2021/08/14/gLAcYnledum3Vsp.png

There is a way of phishing scams: There is a group of people who act as the support team of a project to ask users for personal information, deposits, and private keys.
Don't believe this. Do not share your password, private key, or security prompts with anyone. Anyone who thinks about your password and private key security is a lie. Be vigilant.

OP you listed some of the common scams that everyone came across in the market but I feel that you missed about the scam exchanges which we found on the random google search or through any kind of advertisements.

Scam exchanges lure people with attractive low fee and intial deposit bonus,etc but never ever deposit your money on an exchange which is not familiar for you.

Most people are now aware of fake airdrops alerts or fake giveaway alerts in your email account but the ones that many still fall for are those that gives at least something just to lure you or those that use other big projects name and create fake tokens to sell on uniswap

Thank you so much for the information, This forum is more or less like a school to give and guide us on the daily on social medial scams, thanks for such information and we will put them into consideration.

Many beginners can't tell the difference between official and fake websites because they don't look at very similar website links, the metamask extension application doesn't update realtime to block phishing access, so you have to rely on your own abilities for personal security.

It's not just exchange sites are like that. There are other sites that scam people by doing a giveaway like you earn $50 and all you need to do is to deposit bla bla bla btc amount to withdraw your balance amd some sites are pishing sites where all the details you submitted on their site is they will know about it and steall all your funds in your wallet.

There have been a lot of victims phishing sites of wallet extensions recently. If you are familiar with Ronin wallet(the one which Axie Infinity created for their game), players who are new on crypto and Blockchain are getting hacked because they used wallets like this one. They did put all of their seed phrase and used the same account for their axie investment. People should be aware if the extension is fake or not.

Today one of the most common scams are the phishing we know that the newbie wants to seek some information first and some of them tried to make an investment already and just use of the search engine you can find out but some of them visited and used the phishing website which is the reason why their funds lose and getting hack ( this common today on Axie infinity and Bitcoin wallets ).

This is the reason why always check the URL or the domain. If you can block the ads or recommend not legit website better to recommend to do it.

The important thing is we must always be careful when we are online because even we can protect our data, we still can not give 100% protection because we can forget to do one or two things that can make us get scam.
As long as we can be careful, especially when visiting a new website that we do not know or are not sure if the site is secure, it is better not to enter any personal data of us and leave the site as soon as possible.
The scammers will try to use many ways to trick people and they will get the new target when that person can not be aware of themselves.
If you see someone telling you that they can give you a big profit, that will not be possible because no one can do that except ourselves so always be careful.

This basice precautions should not be disregarded nor ignored specially for newbies. There are a lot of newbies who falls into scams just because they are too lazy to learn about scammers. Little do they know that it will be their weapon against them and it will save them a lot of money that is endangered to be stolen by a fraud. Money isn't the only thing they should worry about because scammers are also after their personal information which may cause much worse problems for a victim. Listen to what crypto-enthusiast tells you about scams, you'll surely thank them for it someday.

People are getting fooled by those schemes where they are offered to get free money or free coins when they download a certain app.

Also there are schemes where people input there information and those criminals will take advantage of the victim's information and get them hacked.

As an investor, or as a responsible internet user, those things that is offering an easy money is really not a guaranteed money so always be mindful and aware about that.

I can give you an example of 3 of the most common scams that you can fall for:

1-Imposter websites - sometimes the links that you open might be redirected to fake URLs so be sure that you type the exact URL in your browser and doulecheck it before proceeding.
2-Fake Mobile apps - Ensure that the app youre wishing to use is authentic and reconsider downloading if needed.
3- Bad tweets and other social media updates - If someone on facebook or twitter asks for even a small amount of your cryptocurrency , its most likely you will never be able to get it back if you fell for a trap.

Hope it was useful. Bye

Google failed to filter out phishing site from showing up when someone did a certain search. Nothing is really safe for anyone on the internet when they fail to verify the legitimate security of the site they want to visit, this is possible with many apps on playstore as well as google extensions. Take precaution by bookmark site you use frequently, including bitcointalk.org because only then can you prevent visiting other phishing site.

Good would show everything that is available, whether scam or not. So it's very important to verify the project you are planning to invest in, one way in verifying it is to visit this forum and ask suggestions from active members here, for sure they'll give enough information that is unbiased.

Newbies tend to be so aggressive, as long as they have the money to invest, they'll try it, especially if the offer is very tempting. That's why crypto is called sometimes a place for scammers is because of the newbies that did not educate themselves well enough before they decided to invest.