Bitcoin Forum

I don't know if any one have raised this alarm here.

Avoid such mails they are all scam

I have been receiving this mail lately and I don't always give a f*ck to it because I don't have account with any platform neither am I expecting any form of payment from any one to any platform, so I total discard the message and trash them at the end even as they keep on coming in.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me how he fell victim of the scam, he also got same email with a tempting amount 0.5+ BTC his greed could not let him let go off the mail he decided to open the link and undergo all their process, and the BTC moved from 0.5 to 1btc + which was worth about $38k according to the screenshots sent over to me  when it was ready for withdrawal, he was as asked to make a payment of $64+ seeing the huge amount of money on the fake platform and his eagger to withdrawal 30k plus  dollars he, made a move purchase Bitcoin from Binance and make deposit to their generated address.
Since then it has been stories upon stories no payment received by him till now.
Links to the scam site

everyday new scam sites are made and advertised, and many members here raise alarm like that.

yes, I avoid

this type of mails are sent to me 100's, because i given my emails to too many PTC sites and some scamy sites, if you use your email at trusted places then you don't get that type of messages especially crypto related sites,
(some small sites sell our email and data for their profit, they are small sites so it's obvious to make some money, not every small site, but some
and don't just ignore and delete their emails, you can see at bottom of that email, their will be a "unsubscribe" button, you can press that you will never get emails from that site.

mostly new users are get trapped in scams, it's common sense no one will going to pay you crypto or money for free, and education is important, you can tell your friend to join bitcointalk forum, he will learn many things and learn to how to detect scams.

Each time you are browsing on Chrome, some sites would want you to accept or agree to their cookies before you can be allowed to browse their site. Most of these sites use the avenue of agreeing to their cookies to collect our information, such as our email, which they then begin to send overwhelming scam emails.

The thing to do to avoid such scam are:

• On any website that is not trusted, don't interact with your email on the site.
• Don't sign up for the newsletter of any website that you are not sure is reputable.
• Don't attend to emails or links in emails that you are not expected to receive.
• black list any unexpected emails you receive

Pretty common and low effort scam but of course, someone out there will fall for it. However, I'm not entirely sorry for your friend as this means they were trying to claim someone else's money...

In any case, email addresses gets passed around a lot hence it's inevitable to not get a couple of scam emails in one of your mail boxes. I suggest keeping your email addresses private as much as possible and compartmentalize - create multiple email addresses to segregate important stuff to non important stuff. They will not solve the problem entirely but it does a good job at minimizing the damage.

Usually that type of email goes to the spam folder and you're unlikely to click the link because they're unclickable. But it's sad to see that there are still some people that fall for it.

That's what lack of awareness does. We just need to think of it that no free money will given away if that's a lot in projection. Even if you try to remember how you've won and got that such amount from other people, don't fall for it.

I just ignore these type of emails.

I guess the amount of newbies and relatively new members informing the public of bitcoin scams consequently increase in this forum everytime bitcoin rises in price yeah? Couldn't help but notice it coz I've been seeing posts like these a few too many these past few days. But I digress.

Rule of thumb, if it says anything from this list

• Get bitcoin for free
• bitcoin faucet
• Free bitcoin
• Earn bitcoin through surveys
• Earn bitcoin

And something along these lines, stay away from them. They are most likely out to scam and steal money from you, so stay away.

Been receiving the same email over and over. I just ignored it because I didn't expect to receive anything as well. After 3 times of sending emails to me with different amounts of BTC, I already know it was a scam. A newbie with greed would fall for it, especially with the expectation of $38k thinking what is $64 when you receive such an amount.

Felt sorry for him not receiving anything. Lesson learned that the internet is full of scammers. $64 could have been saved if he talked to OP first.

This should serve as an example to those newbies out there who are still contemplating putting their money into a random website that has promised to give them a huge sum of money for free. Note that there are no free money here on the Internet, and if a service promise to give you money for free that's a sign that you should rum far away from it.

I think you should educate your friend more on how to avoid phishing and also how to be conscious of his/her privacy and security online. I'm sure if your friend had known about phishing he could have been more skeptical and his $60+ would still be in his wallet.

P.s. I think this thread should be moved to beginners and help board.

I think it's a good idea to use separate emails for Bitcoin activity compared with the rest of your emailing...  This makes it very easy to see what something is a scam immediately.  I have to say though, I've been in Bitcoin for a long time and I've never had a single reason to respond to an email with a Bitcoin payment ever.  I can't even imagine the circumstance that would make me receive an email and think to myself that I need to click a link and then send BTC.  The ease at which crypto can be scammed and the impossibilities of recovering it are one of the biggest challenges that onboarding new users will face.

I get those mails at least once per week, it would be kind of annoying if they were not sent to the spam tray as soon as they arrive.

To be honest, I am not even sure who would fall for such an obvious scam.
At this point it is just matter of hitting the "delete spam" bottom without reading the email.

I have also received those stupid extortion emails, asking for Bitcoin in exchange of not distributing embarrassing information about me, even though such information does not exist.   ::)

This is a very clear scam that he would have avoided it if he was a smart guy. Op thanks you for the information. This will help plenty people who received different emails from unknown sources. Your friend would not learn from this act because the buddy is greedy and he wants to be rich at all cost. If not that screenshot is clearly stated that he should deposit money to his account, as how?

Repeated emails to your mail box is definitely a scam or Spammers so you just have ignore it and if possible unsubscribe from the channels then everything will be normal. Op the only thing you will do to safe this your friend from such again is to advise him with warning. I'd not he will still fall again from another method because those scammers are wiser has the serpent.

I do get mails like this; safety is one thing all of us in the crypto community should always be conscious of. If your friend was fully into crypto, there should have been about 40–80% chances that he could have sensed out that such an email can only be a scam. 
There are lots of scammers out there who have different kinds of targeted victims, and this kind of scam focuses on those who are newbies to the crypto industries; they might definitely not know how to get them in person, but I believe they have specific places where they buy all the mails from and send a bug mail to all their obtained mails. 

If your friend knew that there was nothing like free money in these crypto spaces, then he should have been conscious enough to avoid this kind of scam. Since he has already made his first payment, for which they charge him for withdrawal or whatever the title of the billing may be, if you happen to not hold him and educate him on how all this works, he will come up to you next time with another story of the next deposit made. 

On a normal situation, I do not advise anybody even my friends I onboarded into the system to use their official email but a different mail when it comes to Crypto activities because there are lots of unwarranted emails flying up and down all coming from unknown destinations sent by scammers to gain access to peoples emails all in the name of cookies.

OP, this mail is not new to me neither is it a surprise though. I have long been dealing with this type of mail from different senders some claiming I won BTC some saying I won a BTC coupon and lots more. I do not waste my time anymore opening such mails. What I do is just a click mark as spam, block and delete that is what I do now.

As for the emails, it is not reasonable you use same email you use for Crypto activities for other official create a different mail for Crypto so as to protect yourself and your information from hackers.

Sorry, but who would believe 0.5BTC were deposited on their accounts without any apparent reasons? Money doesn't fall from the sky, even in crypto universe. Every emails which look too absurd to be true must be taken with suspicion by the receiver. Even emails claiming you had an account hacked on an exchange or bank must not be taken as true at first glance.

One hint I give you is to right click the button of the link presented on the email, then copy address of the link and ctrl + v on notepad or any other place, so you can see to where you would be redirected. Usually it's a strange URL, which has nothing to do with the service they claim to be representing.

The topic of this thread is better suited for the Scam Accusation board. Nevertheless, I frequently receive emails asking me to download items like private keys, but I ignore them because I am not interested in free money and simply delete spam messages regularly. If you have a desire for free money, you may become a target for scammers who obtain email data through hacking various cryptocurrency websites. They use such tactics to target crypto users. By controlling your greed for free money, you can also protect your funds.

@Dr.Bitcoin_Strange, @Potato Chips
Are you aware of
Salesq, kloser, growmeorganic, skrapp, kendo, getprospect and many others.
All this tools are use to extract mails from popular sites like linkedln, minds, and any other websites they want. Those tools are specifically design for email marketing.
Even with all the procedures you mentioned about scammers can still your mails providing that you use them to make registration on sites. Something they even go as far as buying those mails from places you use them for survey, spreadsheet registration and so on.

In one way or the other we can still get all this mails their is no way which we can completely ignore them, even when you blacklist the first one they will still come up with another email and continue sending.
The only things to do is to completely ignore the mail even when we receive them it's better off than way, but it's only few who know that those mails are truly scam will be able to resist such tempting offer.
They say greed is one thing that push someone to be a victim of scam.

Not all does, the ones I receive come directly into my inbox unread mails no kind of warning from gmail at all to identify it's a scam or something. Mails which goes into scam folders are those that's has been repeatedly reported as scam, which Gmail or any mail provider will now likely flag them as scam mail. And another thing there as well is that, the scammers are already aware that the mails might likely be sent to spam box so they use other means,  like using an old gmail or any mail account which have been created for several years and has been active for long, using such old mails to send scam mails most of the times mail providers over look it because they are old account that's to say they don't expect old account to be use for such new generational scam.

We sometimes need to read about scams such as these in order to educate the readers about how to avoid such incidents in the future. This scam idea is not new and I don't fall for it.

I got such emails as this for several months, I completely ignored it knowing fully well its all scam, at some point, they started sending the emails every day, I had to block the address where the emails were coming from, they continued to sent it through another address, I continued to ignore until they eventually got tired and stopped sending the emails..

what am I saying in essence?  you will never lose your money if you just allow them send the emails and not take action on it, My sincerely sorry to your friend for falling a victim to this, he actually did due to his greed, trying to reap where he did not sow, I believe he has learnt his lessons, and also that many coming to this thread would also learn from this and never fall victim to such a cheap scam strategy.

You are getting the email because you have used your email to register on crypto-related platforms that verbatim sell their user email addresses or you participated in some airdrop.

You ought to spank your friend's butt really bad. How could he believe there's a chance for him to get 0.5BTC he didn't work for out of the thin air?
The strategy used to scam your friend is a Bitcoin bonus scam on another level.

It truly is. You'll get to filter all of the activities that you're going to do for those emails and you'll get track those potential websites that are sharing their database or leaking it to those scammers.

And that specific email will be clean from these type of email scammers/phishers. I guess everyone should start doing that for them to protect themselves and avoid these unnecessary emails that we're getting from wherever we have signed up.

I am not aware of all the mentioned tools, but I know about the skrapp. There are various ways scammers steal emails of people they intend to scam, I have listed a few of them above. It Wise to blacklist any email that you were not expecting and don't really know who the sender was, and never click on the links in those emails, because some of those links are sent to even attack your system, and if you are not smart enough, they can get all your secret information from you.

Some people who fall victim to email scams are really not to be blamed but rather to be consoled if they are too affected by the situation. Most scammers send the email to a specific person, and they are so aware of every detail of the person before they attack they will get every piece of information about the person, like their real name, their current job and their position in the office, and their home address. So when these emails come, they look so convincing that one can just fall victim.
 One should always be conciouse and keep their head up.

That will just limit the rate at which you will get those mails but it's never a guarantee that they won't come in.
The different is that, if you are using email "A" specifically for social media, and sites which are not related to crypto when ever you get any crypto related mail from that "A" mail box you don't even need any one to tell you that they are likely to be scam without even giving it a second taught.

The basic when receiving unknown emails from unknown sources is to hit delete or transfer it to your spam folder so Gmail will be notified that it is spam and will mark the sender, I have received thousands of spam and scam emails once you opened it out of curiosity you might be tempted to follow the link and click putting your computer and your email at risk so avoid engagement, only newbies do that, scammers and hackers are aware that many people still fall to this scam.
These have been happening since the invention of email. and there are many very popular scams like funds for inheritance and so-called rich people want to donate their wealth only if you will send them the transportation fee.

I'm really sorry that your friend fell for this scam. It's unfortunate we do this to ourselves because of greed. The golden rule is "If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not?."

Thank you for the warning and sharing this. Hopefully this post will help others.

Be careful with that kind of website. It's like the different variations of the scamming techniques where they need your help withdrawing something and then asking you for a fee or processing fee. Like what? Why would you need that on an exchange that "you" have money on and use that to minus the fees etc.?

It's all about thinking clearly and not be amazed at what you can have. It's just greedy people who do not know this and are probably going to.

Thank you for sharing this for awareness.

scam emails are persistent, if it is becoming a nuisance to you, you can make another email and move all the important things that you conduct there and only use that email for business, work stuff or whatever it is that you deemed important.

from what I've seen, people get desperate or greedy enough to make themselves believe that what they received in the email is real or hoping is real. I've seen and heard a lot of people fall to similar scams like this in my country(the scam is not crypto-related though).

What a f*ck!
Did your friend belong here?
Because i know those that are from here are very smarter to overcome such temptation being that they have been reading lots of happening here and they are alert for any phishing mail or pm from anyone.
I also had same experience with a platform that kept sending mails on how they help the needy to donate some certain amount to them, along the line i decide to just pull their legs and i follow up the link sent to me, I opened site and started claiming those bitcoin saying "Mr, john donated 0.01 btc click to receive donations, i do as they said the next person appears again, frank donated 0.07 btc click to accept donation" i kept doing this till at last they said i to receive a total amount of bitcoin to your wallet you have to deposit 0.005BTC to that wallet they provided to me. I just smile and zoom off.

I've seen that with yahoo emails and they're not really clickable. That's why whenever I see these scam emails, I just go to the delete button quickly and have them all marked so that they'll be erased all at once.

I'm checking the senders and they're also like the normal emails that we use, gmails and yahoomails. They're too easy to spot on when the email provider itself has flagged them as an inappropriate and likely a spam email.

There's still need a clean up drive to make people aware that don't click those unsolicited email links.

No he's not, anyone who belongs to the forum is literally exposed above a normal standard and will likely know things regarding security measures and how to avoid them.
Am not saying members here can't be victim of scam, but this kind of scam can easily be avoided by any one with crypto knowledge most especially someone in this forum who will definitely come across various thread in here base on different method of scam.

If you stay here in this forum for quite some time then you will become knowledgeable about different ways that scammers made to temp people like people getting emails receiving crypto or a chance to earn crypto. Not all you received in your email is true where some of it are sent to you in order to lure you into sending funds or sending your information or wallet information. If you receive something the same in the future then better make a research and then share it where you are able to share like this forum.

That's one countermeasure for you to have them get into your mailbox limitedly. And yes, that's why you can do this if you want to limit those scam emails coming in to you.

You'll be aware that you haven't registered somewhere else and you won't click a link that you're unaware of because you have never registered to them, telling that your account is done for and needs to be revamp by clicking a link they've put at the latter part of the email.

As I previously said, they won't be able to solve the problem entirely and are only meant to minimize the damage.

Scam/spam emails are indeed unstoppable but if there are ways so I can better handle them, I'd do it. Let's take compartmentalizing for instance.

1. I have less clutter on my main email accounts as I use temp emails to sign up for test accounts/lesser known services.
2. With email forwarding services I can set up unlimited aliases e.g. 1 alias for 1 service which I can easily nuke if it receives too much shit.
3. If one of my email accounts gets hacked, I limit the possible damage as I don't keep everything in one account.

It's good to know that we are on the same page, and you also have a nice strategies mapped out in other to really minimize risk. Since we can't actually prevent all this scam mails from coming in, it's just advisable for all to use every form of preventive measures that one can take.

Yes, if we are here for a long time, but is not affect for the new user. Many fall for scams like this because don't know this kind, and the word of bitcoin gets more deeper to be scammed. usually, when it will enter a period of bullish like today, we can find many people got scammed because don't know how to save it. I have written these types of scams like youtube with the same method in past, so i don't surprise if this period will repeat again today.

Wow, I'm surprised there are people who fall into this trap. I mean, it's really an old way to scam. I knew about this even from the beginning, when I jumped into crypto. But, however, thank you for bringing this out, because that means there are actually people who don't know about it. I personally never respond to any email that comes in offering this kind of thing. As the saying goes, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is." I don't want to take a risk by opening one of them since so many emails came in to me. I've made a special email for crypto and never really touch it except for registering. Always be vigilant and careful in the crypto world, guys.

We are all not smart up.. sometimes we really don't have to be surprise or even blame the victims of such scam but we just have to educate them on how to avoid such scam again in the future and also console it will mean alot and be a added value to there life.

When the word free is linked to these sort of things it should raise a alarm in your mind that something is scammy here as why would anyone be willing to give you any amount for free of cost.There is always a hidden cost attached to these free giveaways like in form of your privacy breach or draining your wallets by installing malwares on your device and you regret later on.So we need to control ourselves and don't fall for these free mails or bitcoin rewards.

These scam ideas are old, but still work for scammers. If the scammers weren't successful in these scams they wouldn't be wasting their time. Because every day new crypto users come in the crypto market so they are not aware of such scams and will consider these mails as genuine. So by exposing these scams crypto users are getting warnings regularly and can be alert.

That's easy money for the scammer because your friend cannot moderate his greed, this is why scammers keep creating a new schemes to scam people because these people are too greedy to think that the offer is too good to be true.
The cryptocurrency industry is not friendly this is not a generous business you could lose everything here and there are many wolves dressed in sheep's skin, so always check your perception of the industry always ask, always check, and always have doubts when something too good to be true comes to you.
This is not going to be the last scammers will always scam and newbies will always be too greedy not to accept, the cycle will continue unfortunately.

Yes these old ideas generate their money so they are sticking with these old scam ideas. Though I saw many new ideas and unique ideas of scamming, luckily I didn't fall for any of these. They tried so many times but failed all the time.

But I am curious about who are the people that fall for email scams, most of the time I avoid these flashy emails.

This is just like where they make their daily bread, which means they can't just give up; when one way seems to not be working for them anymore and no one is falling victim again, they switch to another. Yesterday, I came across a thread here where the scammer was there to manipulate the victim's mind with a few pieces of information that might have been gotten from an unsecured site that he might have registered on. The scammer tries a new way of scamming by telling the OP to pay some fee in order for the scammer to release the OP's private information online, but the OP being smart enough figured out the scammer's error and used it against him. 
 
The internet space are filled with both good and bad, good and reputable developers and the bad ones who their main objective is spamming, it did not start now, and I definitely don't think it will end now, all we just need is to be careful in other not to be a victim of such one day. 

This kind of scam attempts is not new though, there have been very rampant years ago, you can go in this thread to check out other scams too:  Scam Accusations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0).

As a rule, "if it's too good to be true, it's probably is".

The problem with many newbie in this market though is that they think that they can get rich very quickly and when they see this kind of enticing offer, they quickly bite on it and become greedy. Let this be a lesson to your friend and others as well so that you won't be a victim.

It's no wonder that most people get hit by crypto scams because they are tempted by the value of the assets sent to their email. They couldn't hold back their greed and in the end they fell into the scammers' trap. Even though this is very easy to prevent, by ignoring emails from unknown sources and don't be tempted by "honey" tricks which are usually very tempting. Therefore, now it is very important to be vigilant and learn about security on the internet, so that we can avoid scams like this.

Wow, 0.5+ BTC is definitely tempting, anyone would find it hard to resist, but common sense plays an important role in controlling greed. 0.5+ BTC is a huge amount of exchanged to $, it is impossible for a person or a company to give 0.5+ for free without any connection whatsoever.
A clear mindset is needed when addressing a trap like this. Remember, there are no big rewards free, especially when you receive notifications via email instructing you to open the link and go through the whole process. Scammers always offer something with an unreasonable amount, oddly enough, some still fall into their trap.

This is obviously a scam without being told by anyone, even a newbie should be able to know that this is unreal, what the scammers did wrong is using 0.5BTC which is too high for the easy giveaway, I know greedy idiots can still fall for this but 0.5BTC is thousands of dollars, without doing a thing.

Furthermore, who still checks their mailbox for unwelcome emails?

Scam and spam emails don't always go straight to your Spam folder, but honestly, there's no reason to open any email you are not expecting, that's the easiest way to get phished.