Bitcoin Forum

Currently people are really looking for ways just to scam people which is very bad, scammers are coming up with new techniques or strategies on a daily basics, so whenever you come across thing's listed below you all have to be careful to avoid been scammed.

1. Fake exchange: Scammers will always convince you of a fake exchange. They will give you an exchange and will brainwash you into believing that you can buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrency at a very low price, but once you send your money to the exchange, you will not be able to withdraw it, so if you are making a transaction in any cryptocurrency exchange, make sure it is a reliable exchange that you know about.

2. Ponzi scheme: I believe this scam pattern is very popular right now. They will ask you to send your bitcoin or any coin, and they will say that after 24 hours or a few days, they will double your money, and you will not hear from them again. And I believe it works primarily on newbies who don't understand what cryptocurrency is all about; they believe it's just a place where you can quickly double your money or make money, so please be cautious and avoid all those types of people.

3. Scam coins: There are a lot of new coins entering the market right now, and the main purpose of creating the coin is to scam people. After the coin is created, the team or owner pumps the coin to encourage people to invest in the coin, and then they dump the coin on the investor. This is fairly common in the cryptocurrency market currently when a team dumps coin on investors, therefore you must be very careful if you invest in a coin and do your research thoroughly before investing.

4. Personification: This is another method used by scammers to steal money from people. For example, some may create accounts using a celebrity's name or a social media account using a project's name that is fake and use it to scam people by providing fake giveaways.

5. Black mailing: I believe you should be very cautious about who you share your personal data and videos with, which is mostly done on the internet. This is the process by which you are threatened to send a certain amount of bitcoin or other coins if he/she reveals the person's privacy online, so you should be very cautious about what you reveal to people online.

6. Phishing: phishing is another method used to defraud people of their money. They may send you an email and attach a website link to the email, instructing you to click the link, login, and fill out a form in which they will ask for sensitive information such as your username, password, and other sensitive information. So, in order to avoid this type of fraud, we must be very careful about the type of link you click and the information you enter.

7. Shelling: I believe that this is a type of scam that newcomers can easily fall victim to. This is the process of making heavy marketing on the internet and other places such as newspapers and many more. Shilling is done just to get people's attention, and I believe that coins that are not reliable are the most common coins that do this just to get people's attention, so if you are not mindful, you might think the project is really good and the team is hard working, and you won't know they are just trying to make heavy marketing just to get people's attention, and after investing in the type of coin, they just closedown with people's money. And there are still some good project that do shelling just make it popular so we just have to be very careful.

8: Fake Applications: There are a lot of scam applications on the internet now, and the difference between the real application and the fake one is very small. If you are not careful, you may end up downloading the wrong application and not knowing it. For example, I saw a wallet on the playstore, and I believe the project does not yet have an application, so I requested confirmation from the admin on Telegram which he told me they don't have a application yet, then I reported the app and have even reported two of those apps on Bitcointalk, so we must be very cautious about the type of application we download, and we must always ensure that it is from a reliable source.

Another guide in the history of the forum. Hopefully, tbct_mt2 will add your theme to this collection as well.
Of course, a lot of time has passed since then, but the methods of fraud seem to remain the same.
I agree that new forum members need to be regularly reminded of the dangers of falling into the trap.
Well, if there is not enough guidance on this topic, this directory would be a good addition.


COLLECTION OF GUIDES ON IDENTIFY AND AVOID SCAM PROJECTS (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125435.0)

Some exchanges are also ghost exchanges, they will resemble the domain name of reputed exchanges, such exchanges are taken down, but some people might have been scammed before taken it down, we should visit the correct exchange link.

This is also one of the ways fake exchange scammers have deployed to scam people but also beyond fake exchanges to cloud mining and other forms of HYIP.

Over 12000 coins listed on Coinmarketcap while there are many more, but the marketcap of number 2000 and above are not encouraging while some will significantly dump to of no value, this is one of the potential means people lost a lot of money.

The commonest information demanded for is seed phrase, while many people are scammed like this. Seed phrase, passphrase, private keys should not be given to anyone but remain known to only you and you.

Phishing can also still be through website links, text messages and calls.

The email can even contain a link to a site to download malware, malware can monitor devices, reveal 2fa codes, uses computers to mine like cryptojacking malware that mines monero. Malware can be used to steal bitcoin and other crypto on users devices, malware can be used to controls someone device. Ransomware can even override your computer in a way hackers will demand for ransom, if important information is on your computer, you will have no option unless backup elsewhere.

The best is to download the app in the original site or the original site will direct you to app store. To make use of app store, make sure the app have over 500000 to 1 million downloads or more. Apps having 1000 downloads with good reveals on app stores are fake.

Ad scam, if not the most common: very common now, even google do not mind to receive money from scammers to place scam ad links on top of google sserach, possibly what people will first see after they search will be scam ad links.

Telegram scam, very important to mention, different type of telegram scam, like ICOs and airdrops scam on telegram, also impersonation scam on telegram and many more, people needs to be careful of telegram. Also other social media scams and even YouTube scams.

Pump and dump, pumping new coin to encourage others and later dumping it.

Avoiding sharing of personal information

Avoiding too real to be true offers

Avoid free giveaways (airdrops) many are scammed while some will collect personal information like emails which can be used in phishing attacks.

You missed to add one of the most dangerous scams where YouTube channels and VerifiedTwitter accouts offering 2× return on a fixed deposit amount.And many users losing their funds in this trap.

Recently this type of scam happened and I made a thread about that incident.
Check here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5361408.0

Mix of these two.
I encounter it a lot in Facebook especially in crypto news pages. Either they are claiming to be a legitimate page of the news, but you will see that they zero likes/followers or a randomized name with an obvious stock photo. They are claiming that they are full-time trader in their bio and most of them would like you to contact them through WhatsApp.
Sad that Facebook does not give a crap from my hundreds of reports to those fake profiles/pages even if I requested a re-review of my report again.

And first and foremost, everyone should go through the scams and accusations thread here to know who's to trust and who's not. Honestly, some people on this forum, new members and even older ones, completely disregard that that's the most current and accurate scam report list regarding crypto available. Before any investments, everyone should doublecheck if anything is poping up over there

A fake (scam) casinos are another type of scam to be aware of in addition to fake exchanges. There are some casinos or bookmakers that may seem legitimate at first, but end up shutting their doors when they steal enough money from unsuspecting customers. Yes, a lot of them exist out there, especially in crypto world. Some are dodgy and may look legit, but you should never ever touch their site unless you're 100% sure. There are some that will occasionally give out small winnings to keep in business as long as possible in order to attract larger players.

I guess this falls to personification labeled by the OP, and phishing. If OP can add fake giveaways it will fall the same category too.

Fake giveaways/contest can be added on the list too.

The problem is not avoiding what you have listed. It is easy to avoid a fake exchange, Ponzi, scam coins, and so forth, but only if they are 100% obvious. People are falling for scams not because they failed to avoid it but because they failed to identify one. People invested because they thought it is not ponzi. People downloaded an app because they thought it is not fake. They clicked on something because they thought it is not phishing. They bought a coin because they thought it is has a bright future. They would have avoided everything had they known beforehand that they are all scams. So what people actually need to learn is the ability to identify a scam. Avoidance naturally follows.

Very nicely explained. The problem with new people on the crypto sphere is that they start to believe in everything that they see. Publicity and trust, both aren't the same thing. It is always the project that people should look into before investing - not the publicity of the coin.

Overall, anything on the internet needs to be checked very deeply before trusting.

Some people do not even know what a ponzi scheme is, some do not know some apps are fake all because they are downloading it from all store, some people do not know what is called phishing, some people only know about this when they are scammed already and know they have to be careful next time, only few people were able to know and avoid before they are exposed to one of the scams. If someone knows about scams already, it is simple to just avoid.

It is all the mistakes out of ignorance that are passed through in their own experience and leads a person to the study of security.
This is human nature. Only after losing something do many wonders why this happened.
For someone, it is simply impossible to get into a scam, since they know all aspects of online security. If I know not to click on suspicious links, I am not in danger of phishing. It's the same with everything else.
But there are people to whom warnings, no matter how much they are created, seem to be nonsense, and due to their lack of education, they are regularly deceived.
For everyone, there is a certain number of life lessons, after which people begin to think.

Publicity doesnt mean is legit. Yes it is good as there are major exposure of such projects leading to their growth however some of those are manipulated or fake, that resulted to being a scam one. Social media is powerful, even its promoted by a famous or popular influencer or crypto enthusiasts, doesnt mean its legit. Those are paid promotions that make them famous and at the middle of the game will eventually gone when they reach their target money.

This has been rampant now. A lot of people got to fall into using known personalities just to cover up their real identity. We've heard this very often and are so sad to see that this was the cause of being greedy just to think that these people are legit and can be trusted but behind those faces, scammers it will be. If we have a lack of research and awareness, that was surely we become a victim of this trick. As this internet had become a medium to huge scamming this time, the more we are careful, especially when dealing with someone we don't know yet.

This should be branch of ponzi scheme where you get double or even triple of your investment and the frustrating part is that most of this channels looks so legit that you begin to defend them hoping the will keep to their terns and supposed only to realize you have been scammed by does hoodlums one just have to be careful with most online adverts and avoid ponzi completely

It does in most cases, but I do think it's worth specifically mentioning in these kinds of threads because actual legitimate entities can easily get compromised and put up a similar scam. We don't even need to look that far back for a high-profile one considering what happened to bitcoin.org (https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-org-goes-offline-after-suffering-scam-attack).

With regard to ponzi-schemes, no matter how appealing or convincing their offers might be, avoid them at all cost.

Just to share you my experience, USI-TECH even visited our country and held a conference where all investors went and socialized. I was "fortunate" enough to meet the developers who also shared the same passion in cryptocurrencies. The funny thing is, most of the people in the crowd are flexing about their so called "packages" and that they earn roughly around $100/day due to the returns that they are getting.

Since I was young and naive, I fell into the trap and invested BTC. Unfortunately, the campaign crashed after 3 months and I lost all of my BTC in the process. The bottomline is- even if projects cause it to appear that they have genuine and real people backing up, never trust ponzi-schemes!

I think fake applications also lands as a phishing. Like those fake apps that are copying the known wallets and exchanges and they tend to make it really look alike leaving with few positive reviews which obviously made by them. One thing to look at is the number of downloads and OP is right about looking at the official app because if it's not on the official website and they didn't announced anything about their app then whatever you've found through the playstore is an obvious fake app.

The most popular among those using the verified twitter accounts scamming people is the one that Elon Musk's account is regularly used. It is confusing to me how they always hack into his account to make those tweets. Because alot of people know how rich Elon Musk is they fall easily to those scams thinking it is from Elon promising to double their cryptocurrency sent to a particular wallet address. People should avoid those type of tweets.

Whatever it is everyone should know that there are no free in this world or making an easy money out of nowhere. Most people knows already how the hard work pays off and not by scamming people. One thing that I could tell is if a newbies is not as informative when dealing with people and money they for sure would get scammed eventually and that would be their hardest lesson in life.

It's better to read and do more research first how people would scam someone than to research how to make money. It's not that all people would scam you but the more information you have the more you will be vigilant to these kind of people making schemes just to make money from someone. Knowledge is the key to your success.

I would also prefer not to deposit your coins on any of the centralised exchanges also as not your keys not your funds.The exchange held your private keys and moreover they are prone to hack easily as we have seen in the past and latest incident also suggest the same   Hacker's stole crypto currency from coinbase of 6000 users (https://m.economictimes.com/markets/cryptocurrency/coinbase-says-hackers-stole-cryptocurrency-from-at-least-6000-customers/amp_articleshow/86688696.cms).

That's why it is advisable to use hardware wallets as keys don't leave the device and anyone won't have access to them unless you are careless similar to other cases.Use them for security and leave these exchanges if you are aware of some situations.

It should be part of their research to have some preventive measures on how to be not scammed. If being done with how to make money then they also should know what are the types of scams and how they should protect themselves from those.
There are newbies that can't protect themselves because whenever they see something too good to be true, they're rushing on it without questioning the deal and just throws their money into that scam or downloads the apps as quickly as they can. They just don't want to ask anyone about it.

This is exactly what I saw yesterday too, the hackers were able to have access to the users password, email and means of authentication which I guess will be sms authentication, but the users are more to be blamed for this.

It is not good to store coins on centralized exchanges, it is good to have a wallet we have its private key, there are many people that have lost their coins on centralized exchanges just because they do not have the private key, the exchanges will have to coins, the user will lose it, just like to mistakenly sent bitcoin to bitcoin cash address and many like that.

Storing all assets in a centralized exchange is not good, we must have a personal wallet, especially a hardware wallet which is certainly more secure such as safepal, ledger, trezor etc.
We hold our own private keys and have full access. But if you have to store on a centralized exchange, choose a centralized exchange that is trusted and has many users like Binance which has the best level of security today.

As individuals, we must maintain device security and must be clean from malware and avoid phishing etc.

Storing on centralized exchanges gives no complete control, the best are noncustodial wallets, preferably hardware or any other offline wallets for amount that are huge. But the exchange was not blammed for the email, password and authenticator used by the affected users were all hacked, this makes it possible that their noncustodial wallet can also be hacked. The best advice in this is for people to avoid malware and protect their login details.

Aside from trading, no one should think of storing coins on exchanges be it legit or not legit, noncustodial wallet is the best and making users to have complete control over own coins.