Bitcoin Forum

The invention of new technology has given the people a means of living more comfortably and efficiently than before. But unfortunately scammers make use of such opportunity to thrive and take advantage of people by scamming and stealing their funds away. The invention of cryptocurrency offers transparency and freedom from financial constraints through solving problems encountered by traditional currencies (fiat) and allows one to be in full control of their investment. Due to its decentralized framework, scammers use this opportunity to trick people into making them believe in them and steal their bitcoin away which can likely not be recovered back once sent to them.

Many things have changed over the past few years when it comes to perils being pose in cryptocurrency today. Many have fall victims of these scams especially beginners who have no knowledge and are unaware of these scams that appears to them to be real. This post will serve as a guidance and precaution for beginners to watch out for potential red flags when involving in any cryptocurrency transaction. All important informations are simply explained and straightforward in each subject matter.

1. Blackmail
Blackmailers have gone so far that they use anything against their victims to lure them into sending them money usually bitcoin. They intimidate their potential victim from any angle and however making them trust and believing in them by gaining access into a very sensitive information about them. They leverage on that information into threatening to release them online if you don’t send them money, an information or something important that you don’t want anyone to have access to or see. Some tell you they had access to your computer after installing a logger software to access your webcam. This kind of Microsoft software is known as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) which gives them access into interfering into the graphical interface of your computer.
One of the way to avoid such scams is by being careful with the type of login credentials you select online, who have access to your information and sensitive informations you fill in a form online. Using different security method in your computer system is highly advisable such as a two-factor authentication (2FA) to avoid access into your computer’s privacy.

2. Fake Exchanges
Many exchanges nowadays keep scamming people as they make people fall into their trap by giving them astonishing offers. They have no difference with the legitimate exchanges and their activities are the same. They invite users (traders and investors) by given them offers such as very low transaction fees, buy low and sell big within a period of time, getting to earn bitcoin at a very cheap rate, also posing to them a competitive market. These exchanges exit scam after disappearing and milking their traders and investors off there money. You’ve to be aware of all such exchanges and be wary of red flag when an exchange poses that.
Bitcointalk has a very good track record of busting scams in the past till date. You can always ask in the forum when you suspect an exchange or any other services that poses scam.

3. Fake Giveaway
This is another way that scammers lure their victims and scam them off their money. They promise to give you something huge in return to what you’re been asked to deposit. For instance, you might be asked to send 0.2BTC to get 3 times of it back (0.6BTC). This can also be done using other cryptocurrencies not only bitcoin. When you see any news from a platform - social media (mostly Twitter) or websites online asking you to deposit little amount of funds and get more than that in return you should stay away from such offers as they’re scammers. No legitimate giveaway will ask you to deposit money first.
Some go beyond asking you to deposit funds, but also asking you to provide sensitive informations like your private key before you’ll be entitled for the giveaway. If you succumb to them and send it you’ll lose all your money. Because the word private means only yours to keep, not to be revealed to others. If such information are been given out it is no longer “your keys, your money” but “not your keys, not your money”.

4. Malware
Some malware programs are infected into your system after clicking on a link or after downloading and installing an app online into your system. Some malware software once installed into your system will steal your private key then send to the scammer. Scammers have gone far this days that they make you send money directly to them without you noticing. One of the common malware software is the copy-and-paste malware, where the address you’re sending the money to will be automatically changed into the scammers address. To avoid such occurrence, you should always double check that the address you’re sending the funds to is 100% accurate. Constantly scan your system security, be wary of software that you’ll give full access to into your computer’s administrator, get an upto date antivirus into you system and scan for threats regularly.

5. Social Media Scam (Impersonation)
Scammers are everywhere now, they impersonate people such as a well recognised person into scamming people by giving them giveaways and such similar offers. They impersonate the original person by using fake accounts and directly messaging you that there’s an offer, if you’re interested you follow up by following some steps and guidelines. There activity and mode of operation is the same as that of the person they’re impersonating. Don’t fall for such scams when you’re been messaged or seen a red flag. Always confirm from multiple sources before falling prey for such tricky scammers. Most times, people of such caliber always have a blue tick on their social media accounts. So be careful when following up for any giveaway on social media.

6. Phishing Email
Phishing email is one the lucrative and effective way for scammers to lure their victims. They send you emails which looks real and can’t be differentiated from fake ones, they prompt you to take action immediately to the email sent. They might be asking you to provide some sensitive informations about your accounts, like updating your password if you still want to have access to your services, updating your account also. All these are done to gather credible informations about your login details. Some go to the extend of sending links through email, which such links contain some sought of malicious software or redirect one to a scam website. In order not to fall prey of this type of scam, always contact the main source of the email from the contact information they provided via their websites.

7. Ponzi Scheme
Ponzi scheme is a very lucrative way scammers use to scam their victims. The operation of the scheme works in such a way that the money of new investors are being used to pay the older investors. When the scammers don’t get new people to join and scam, then the project fails and money stops coming in. Bitconnect is one example of a Ponzi scheme in the past. Try as much as possible to avoid any project that guarantees high profit in return of what was invested. Don’t join any project that depends on new members money to pay the previous members in the project, the result of this is always people losing a lot of money at the end.

8. Others
i. Hackers
Hackers are also potential scammers that will infiltrate into your computer system thereby getting access to your funds saved in there or sensitive informations to have access into your wallets. The best way to avoid such scammers is by using
- Two-factor authentication for all your accounts
- Using of firewalls
- Installing an upto date anti virus software
- Use strong passwords and yet easily accessible ones for your convenience
- Stay away from malicious links or attachments you come across on the web
- Make sure your private keys are well stored and in hard wallet
- Make sure your passwords are not vulnerable online to attacks i.e don’t store passwords online or any website.
Research have also been found that web-based exchanges and wallets are constantly hacked, and your money is never saved in them. Most hacked exchanges are unable to compensate their customers for the money they have lost. When such exchanges are hacked or compromised, you lose all of your money (sometimes claimed to be hacked). Exchanges like Cryptopia and Mt.Gox have been hacked in the past. KuCoin is another example of a hacked exchange, although they have since strengthened their security. Cold storage wallet is the finest place to keep your money. Any money that are not under your control should be considered a risk because they can be lost at any time. When leaving money in an exchange for an extended period of time, you need to be cautious.

ii. Altcoin
Altcoins are never worth to be invested in. Most altcoin are scams, they’re unlikely to survive the market in the long run, and their value is likely to plunge to nothing. Altcoins carry a high risk of investment because of their volatility nature, as evidenced by studies. Bitcoin is the head, the leader. It has no affiliation with other coin and will continue to stand on its ground as the best cryptocurrency ever existed.
Developers of such coins manipulate the coin's market price and make appealing offers to entice individuals to join their society. Early hodlers (developers) will be able to boost the coin's price by pumping it and then dumping it once they've made their money. Be wary of all these shitcoins; the majority of them are fake. Most of them are centralized and have no smart contracts.

iii. Celebrity/Influencers
An influencer/ celebrity who is well known would use his/her influence into luring people to come and invest in a particular coin. Some of these influencers already own some percentage of the coin already and are looking to invite more people for them to increase their profits. Some of these type of projects work like a referral contest, where you gain more profit by inviting more people into the project. Some developers pay influencers/celebrity to help them advertise their project, thereby bringing in more people into their community and the celebrity/influencer is being paid after the adverts. Because you’re a fan of such person, shouldn’t make you fall a prey of such project.
In cryptocurrency, don’t invest in a project because of what a renowned person says about it but find time to do your own research and know the future potentiality of such projects.

v. Personal Research
Learn to do your own research before investing in any project. Many projects entice people by offering money watering offers that can’t be easily let go off. These offers are just there to lure you into investing in them. Before you must join any project no matter how truthful it looks and their activities, learn to do your own research and ask questions from (only trusted)  experts who are into it before you.
They're professionals on the bitcointalk forum who are willing to guide you and answer your questions about a certain project. If it's critical to join a project in which you wish to invest your money, confirm its validity from multiple sources. A person who is continuously asking questions will never be lost or misled.

There are more examples to this that I have compiled, but these are some of the more common ones that newbies fall into. This will assist, guide, and educate newbies so that they do not fall victim to any of these bitcoin frauds. As we all know that “prevention is better than cure”.

you analyzed all this well, but as far as I can see almost all of them have the common epithet "fake". Fake exchanges, Fale giveaways, fake SM accounts, fake (phishing) email, and fake (Ponzi) investment opportunities.
it seems to be the only and must prevention of many of these models of fraud is detailed research before any investment. Unfortunately, beginners usually do not do this until they realize that they have been deceived. after that they find very precisely all the scam allegations made.

Here is a comprehensive collection of guides, lists, links to many threads concerning cryptocurrency scams and how to avoid and protect yourself from them: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5125435.0

All you've mentioned above should start here, DYOR is very important to all newcomers before they will be putting their money as an investment.
All of you've mentioned are pretty common scam activities that we usually heard here, fraud is everywhere waiting for someone who will be caught in their trap, and those lazy and greedy people will most likely be next to their victim.

We have a community here that can be a part of your DYOR, stick to this board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0) and find out more scams or if you will find them, you can spread awareness here.

It all starts with lack of knowledge and as well as being greedy.

With basic knowledge, a newbie is unlikely to get scammed and get into those phishing sites. That blackmailing, I've been receiving them on my email and it's also a type of scam and sadly, there have been victims that I've read before that also received that type of email from them.

Next to it is about the thinking that they can all be rich quickly by just investing into crypto. It's a mindset of a greedy person and then will eventually fall for the ponzis and other the same scam.

It would be cool if you also mentioned that in order to avoid being victim of hackers it would be ideal to avoid two-factor authenticantion based on one's personal number, since using it may lead to a theft of funds in exchanges through SIM-swap attack:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_swap_scam

Which it is a fairly easy way for the hacker to social-engineer their way into our accounts if we are not careful enough.

It would be also cool if you included some sources and links to useful articles in this little research of yours.

Yes it is i know there is some scam buster around here but Do Your Own Research is very important before invsting in any project neither money nor your time. Double check the fact i know the project nowadays using anon team aswell make it hard to identified.

But you always talk with the community.

and small note from me
if there is people DM you offering million dollar or thousand dollar for free that is obvious fake to good to be true

Another topic on it

• [BEWARE] Sim Port Attack (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5146701.0)

Basically, people must know the basics for security and maintain a healthy habit when they use computer, mobile devices and web-surfing. If they can, let's buy a good Internet security / Antivirus software for their device. However, it is a second layer of protection. The first layer is knowledge and healthy habit.

I do not see anything new in your topic that could say that something has changed lately and something new has appeared. Hackers have been around since the advent of the internet. Internet safety should be taught to kids who are allowed access to a computer.

Everything that was covered by the OP appears before our eyes from year to year, and it seems that it turns into a game of chance. Someone creates such guides, which the Internet is full of today, and someone stupidly uses the old methods of deception. Phishing, cheating on trust, creating virus programs, and so on... And as long as there are frivolous people who say that they will not be affected by fraud, the scammers themselves will cash in on very old and already known methods of deception.

Fake exchanges should be avoided, it can be a very fake one with its own name or it can be a ghost exchange that have a similar name to the existing exchanges.

About Ponzi scheme and other hyip, I still always surprised that many people know this and well conversant with it, but they are still buying new coins that are highly risky. Some cryptocurrencies are also pumped and dumped by developers, making new investors to lose. It was a surprise that a well recognized coin, terra luna was also a pumped and dumped coin.

The 2FA app should not be on your device used for the accounts, it should be on different device, if no internet connection, it would b better. Also going for hardware authenticator is secure.

This can help against some ads as well, but for ads blocking, I will recommend ublock origin.

This is as the same as to be careful of big companies search engines like Google, be careful of their link ads

It's funny how you advice other users to not invest on shitcoins while you're promoting the shitcoins it self under your signature :P

When you're using the signature or joining a social medias bounties, you're promoting the shitcoins and this make any people including beginners to aware of this shitcoin, moreover they might invest it. You're not different with those shitcoins project team, you're helping them to scam many people. There's no such DEX will run on centralized chain e.g. BNB.
 

Good work for Keeping the collection updated for beginners. We need to create more awareness in order to save people, especially newcomers in this forum because of their inexperience. Rate of crypto scam is really something to be concerned about so lets be careful not to fall victim to any of these scams.

I think the high volume of scam we see in crypto is one of the downsides or cons of a decentralized ecosystem, in an community where individuals are absolutely free to carry out transactions anonymously, it should be expected that some bad actors in that society will want to take advantage of that privilege to scam or defraud unsuspecting victims.
This is why it is advised to always be security conscious in this space, always be skeptic of everything and everyone because nothing and no one  can be fully trusted, when buying coins other than Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum, it is advised to always do a proper research, know when to go buy and also know when to sell, as we are advised to always be patient with our investments, it is also imperative that we do not allow patience turn to greed, for many have made millions in crypto, but lost it due to greed.

That's what I see also and for posting this it seems that he really doesn't mean what he post because he still promoting what possibly put newbies in danger because he promote something risky to go with. But since he's into that we should assure that we will never get hype and also secure what profit we got already and don't think for more since most of shit tokens dumps then hard to recover when pumping times of it comes already.

There was a time I even received a notification telling me that I have won $200 and all I needed to do it to insert my wallet secret phrase to claim it. I then created a new account in trust wallet and then gave them the secret phrase after which it said "our system has detected that you have more than one wallet, please input your real wallet key phrase.   ;D

but there are some who fail to use the device safely, they don't care about the device used. This attitude makes it easy for hackers to break into it. and buying a premium antivirus application is certainly a good recommendation, I have also used premium antivirus for several of my devices. there is also an antivirus that is provided with a trial version and there are also those who use a pirated version of the antivirus, which will eventually attack their own devices.

Right a good anti-virus is always good to prevent malware attacks, but as far as I am concerned SIM-Swap attacks are carried out by a hacker who convinces one's telephonic company that they are the rightful user of your SIM, basically an identity scam. If they manage to convince them, the hacker is granted with a SIM with one's telephonic number which is eventually used to reset the access to emails and exchange accounts.

In that case it has little to do with malware, it is possible though that the hacker uses malware to steal personal information which would be used to trick the company operator.

xD thats gonna be a real scammer out there. Imagine they even detected that you just created a dummy wallet. Scammers now are really techie but they are wrong to trick others who already learn the basic of wallets and the idea of being scammed and hacked.

Thanks for sharing OP even though I read countless warning and reminders here, there are lots of scam victims being seen which implied that most newbies or users didnt care the process or knew that it was a scam. Too bad, that eagerly to earn money ignoring this kind of cautious warning.

We could go as far as to generalize that actually the top cryptocurrency scams to be avoided by beginners are altcoins themselves and all the altcoin hypes such as ICO, airdrop, DeFi, NFT, and others, could we?

Of course, this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but given the history of these and since we are talking about beginners, isn't it just right that they should also avoid getting into altcoins and the rest that are mentioned?

Altcoin are much abused method on scamming so for sure many lesson can be learn if newbies just search some information about this because for sure there are more information will pop up everywhere about this discussions. Also maybe the first thing they need to do if they really want to learn about altcoin is to join only on airdrop and don't spend any dime on it because for sure there are lot of learnings by continuously following the altcoins trend.

With due respect @Despairo, I never said all shit coins are scammed but to be wary of the ones you want to invest into. You said I promote shitcoin on my signature, before that what about the campaign managers who bring such campaigns into this forum. Does that mean the campaign managers are also promoting shitcoins by bringing them here to advertise.

There is no problems in promoting a shit coin and it all depends on your definition of a shit coin. Shitcoins are not scam coins, or rather not all shitcoins are scam coins but majority of shitcoins turn out to be scam.
Meanwhile, all flourish altcoins today were once shitcoins. The most important thing is not to promote an obvious scam shitcoin or shitcoin that has no good road map.

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Scammers are very smart and dynamic, such that they device new strategies everyday in order to remain relevant in the industry. Newbies try and be smart.

I wholeheartedly agree with you- newbies (even long time investors) should always do research before they invest their capital into something.

This should be considered as the general rule of thumb before investing any amount of money into something. I remember back in 2018 when the price of BTC reached an ATH of $20,000, lots of people invested without even knowing the market. They rode the 'hype' without even understanding what they are investing on. When the price crashed on the first quarter of 2018, they are also the ones who shouted and complained that investing into BTC is a 'scam' and/or a 'bubble.'

That is why before anyone invests into a particular item, one must always do their corresponding research in order to avoid any further complications that one MIGHT experience in the long-run.

So that's the point I mean. Malware will be used to hack users' personal data and use it to carry out SIM swap attacks with the existing data. So the use of antivirus is also very important. Some of the methods used by hackers must be prevented. SIM swap is an example of a social engineering method that will convince the operator that the hacker is really the owner of the SIM.
Personal data security is very important. hackers can use any means to gain access to personal data.

You should add this, that many are scammed when the turn up the heat of their level of greed, that I one of my favorite keyword when telling someone about crypto-currency, it’s would be very hard for any scammer to get to you when you show know interest in them and what scam scheme they are offering, and I am still trying to understand the blackmail part, I think this particular one can happen to anyone and really is a criminal case that even the most security conscious people can fall victim of

I believe scams evolve as imvestors get smarter and more suspicius. So with that, this list might be obsolite in the future with scams not looking / functioning like the scams nowdays. It's an everchanging landscape and we need to keep up.

I believe the reason behind this argument is because some people don't understand that shitcoin simply means meme coin, undersized or no worth coin which is yet to be scam coin.
Having said that, the most reputable altcoin we see in the market today started as shitcoin and this reminds me of Solana which i participated in their airdrop when the coin was launched but choose not to withdraw the coin because i see it as coin that wont excel in the market.

Shitcoin can turn into a reputable coin and can also turn into a scam coin but what's important is having knowledge about how to spot shitcoin that be a reputable coin in the future. In addition to that, in this current market, a lot of reputable coins will turn into shitcoin while some shitcoin will turn into reputable.

Your topic should have been general scams every newbie should avoid, not necessary top. Scams is scam, it doesn't have a measurement or range because money is subjective to people, what you consider small may be another person total assets both online and offline.
The thing is that, scams are everywhere and you can't stop it as long as there is finance in such place, the only thing we can do is to continue to warn people especially the newbies to take caution and warnings about these things, malware and Spyware for example is something everyone should take serious both newbies and high rank members.

Exactly, these are real enough, scams can be done in many things, ways, and also strategy. Moreover, when it is also related to certain hacks, this is very dangerous. unfortunately in several cases, it may be quite difficult to avoid, but it needs more carefulness moreover when we are using devices online.
Like what you said here:
Sometimes, we are triggered or accidentally click certain links, downloads, or other activities that will lead us to get those three. That is why it is always stated that every time we are related to online activities, we must be more careful in every step we are doing anything.

Unfortunately many newbies especially are experiencing this, they believe someone who impersonate as others. The weakness is that many newbies will not check or crosscheck whether they are real or not, whether the person or groups are real and official or not. Moreover, if the group or person promises something very legit, many newbies will trust them without rechecking. that is why many newbies commonly will fall into this scam.

Also be very wary when asking for help if someone asks to see your private keys to rectify/solve your issue or even better yet, if someone asks you to set up a Teamviewer session and to give them control in order to rectify/solve your issue- this will provide unfettered access as well as cut and paste abilities.  These are sure way to have your wallets drained soonest.

To say the fact some project aren't worth taking a research on, just by merely seeing you could deduce how authentic they are, lots of factors could resulted to them been failed before their launch, check their location, profiles, history, developers, liquidity, market cap, website scan check and many more proofs, there's a way they manipulate some of the points I've listed above as well, user must be careful not to loose that he has in the process of acquiring more to it.

That's why bitcoin isn't by any means thesame as some of other coins, i learn that you can out smart someone who is taking a spy on you for a haunt down, the only solution is to flee away in total avoidance of such person, same is required on other cryptocurrencies except for bitcoin which deserve more investment to be made.

I guess not only beginners but most of us only learned that it’s a scam once we experienced it and lose our profits. And for me, that’s just normal. Atleast we committed mistake first and then learned afterwards, and not to do the same mistake again. Most of us come into the market with greed and less knowledge, so being put into scam first I guess is a natural thing when you’re into crypto.

First and foremost any social media promoting related to crypto are impersonators. Until the official announcement from the twitter account comes from the verified account , do not fall for this as most people are getting scammed via Social media like Discord , twitter etc.
Fake giveaways are a thing too and you?ll be asked to deposit this much amount and they?ll promise returns of 3x. Do not fall for these too.
Links especially have to be careful as these URLs can lead to some other site where hackers are readily waiting for your information. Make sure you know and verify the website before entering confidential information!

Lastly use 2-Factor Authentication for all accounts and use a strong password to keep your account secure. Do not share your secret password!