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I was reading this, that bitcoin and other crypto were banned in India in 2018. The ban was lifted, but later 30% crypto tax was imposed on crypto users and this led to Indians preferring to exchange crypto and rupee within themselves which can be on decentralized exchanges or centralized exchanges.


The scammers will have the information to bank details and other necessary personal documents of the victim through fake airdrops and others means to lure the victims to provide their personal data. They will use the victims documents and necessary bank details to register on a centralized exchange. Create a centralized exchange P2P buy order, using the victims money that he has in bank to pay and receive crypto in return. And the scammer will transfer the coins out of the exchange.

You can read about this in complete from https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-p2p-scams-india

Avoid giving out your personal documents and personal data because it can be used to steal all your money.

The case in your OP is different from the usual seller refusing to release funds from escrow or buyer not actually sending funds but marked the order as paid, etc. The source in your OP is talking about identity theft, scammers are buying and stealing people's banking details and using it to carry out peer to peer trades, i don't really know how much info you'd have to give away for a scammer to be able to send money out of your bank account without you knowing, (but i guess it has to be so much).

Thus the warning has to be that users should protect their personal details, don't post it anywhere or inadvertently send it to scammers when looking for cheap buck. Once the scammer makes this anauthorized payment and receive the coins, there is no way to retrieve it or trace them because it was your details that was used for the registration process.

Thank you for telling me this. I have edited the OP to make it perfect for people to understand. The people that submit their KYC documents to scammers unknowingly are the victims which are not even involved in the transaction between buyer and seller, but because their bank account details was known to the scammers, it was used to make transaction from the victims bank account.

I see this as a way not to steal directly from the victims bank account, but instead, they use it to buy crypto from a centralized exchange.

Those banks must have really horrible security, because I can't imagine this happening to me even if my government id got leaked to scammers. My banks use fingerprints, face id, phonecalls, email, in-app chat for extra verificiation, and they have risk assesment algorithms. When I make typical transactions, they can processed in an instant, but if something is off, they would do extra verifications to make sure it's really me doing the transaction.

People should vote with their wallets and use modern digital banks with secure infrastructure.

From your explanation something seems to be unclear here.. Now let say; normally when people got involved in airdrops campaign and possible they could asked for kyc to get verified on their platform or website as the case seems to be.

Now how do they uses to verify their exchange account such as Binance main while before your identity could be used for verification on Binance p2p trade it should be that your bank name and your kyc details tally correctly before you could execute trade on binance, this same thing applicable to the buyer and the seller and if both details aren't complete Binace wouldn't allow such trade.  At this point where and how taking account number will lead to scam each other?

Even though someone's account is being used Binance must request for kyc name to correspond with the account number and if that doesn't work there will be no trade, although I don't know if Binance changes the policy already.
What we must be very careful of is our Documents they can easily used them to pass kyc in some exchange. The only scam that is common with p2p is for seller to mark paid while they haven't paid and when funds are being released to them and you didn't receive alert this shows such person has been scammed.

You know the extent scammers can go. It is possible that some people are impersonated among the victims and asked to give them details that can be used to steal money from their bank so that they can receive their high yield investment profit. In my country, this scam is very common in a way that scammer can steal your money from the bank which is through impersonation and if you give them what they requested for, your money in your bank account would be stolen. But some people carry it to the next level of using crypto instead of doing the scam directly.

Avoid giving out personal information cause it can be used in a thousand and one ways against you and once that information is public you can never regain privacy.
You should consider any email address, password, name age and personal details you've submitted to any website to be compromised cause there is a huge black market for such information.

Do not rely on your Banks to do extra checks or on the exchange to be more careful with who the allow to register an account.

Okay now I got it clearly..
Is also common over here but people are aware of it so when such wants to happen or when they received a fake call from scamming trying to impersonate a banker and staff from any of their branch people easily detects because already they have warned people that bankers and staff would never call you in asking of their banking credentials or valuable information that could lead to extortion of anyone's fund.

When they noticed that people had discovered their ways of tricking customers through bank customer care service, they limited their operation through banks maybe who knows what they may devised now as a scamming tools.

I'm curious about how one could create a Binance account using fraudulent documents when they have a live face verification process. Other platforms might only ask for bank statements and government-issued ID cards. If that's the case, those platforms should consider modifying their verification methods. However, we must remain cautious and avoid falling for the idea of easy money through Airdrops. Sharing documents for a small amount of money can be risky and potentially lead to scams.

This kind of scam is not common in my place, and I am even wondering how possible it is for someone to be able to carry out transactions with your bank account without having all of your details, which include transaction pin or token number, bank verification number, and in some cases, before you can authorise a person's bank account, you will also be asked to provide their correct date of birth. Only if you have such complete details can you hack into a person's bank account. Someone can easily or freely give out their bank account number and their full name, but with that, your account cannot be hacked without your notice because the bank will definitely send you a verification message.

Anyway, crypto enthusiasts just have to be careful when handling their crypto assets and make security paramount.

Why KYC is extremely dangerous and useless (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5221497.0)

If you KYC, you lose your identity documents and can not get them back. You never know how those documents will be handled by that exchange and maybe they hire another third party company to do KYC verification. It is double risk if you fall into that process as your identity documents can be leaked by that exchange or by the third party company.

A great and gentle reminder. This issue is not only faced by Indians as many other airdrops hunters or I should say people who fell for FOMO faced this scams. And some even do not aware of the crypto fully they have no idea about BTC blockchain and how things work. Most of them still think if we invest in BTC we will be rich over night and some think it is scam. People having no knowledge are tagging BTC and Blockchain like they know everything about it.

Even, I have tried a lot of people near me to avoid giving there information out for small money and the worst thing is people to earn money in world coin (idk if i write the correct name but its the token of OpenAI) what they are doing to earn Word coin is scanning there eye fingerprints in exchange of money and there face recognition. Means they are giving up on all of there information just for a small amount of money,

The average amount of KYC information you have to hand over to a centralized exchange is more than enough for an attacker to commit identity theft and gain access to your fiat accounts. And given that every major exchange has suffered, and continues to suffer, data hacks/leaks/breaches or even just outright sells your data, then anyone who has completed KYC is at risk.

Plenty of software out there, even free software, which can change your face in real time: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-05-11/realtime-ai-deepfakes-how-to-protect-yourself

What I have understand is that,for a scammer to have full access to get funds out of your account,the scammer needs to have an OTP code sent to the original owner of the account and if the owner sends the scammer the OTP,that is when he can use your funds to buy crypto. On the other hand,if the scammer can't get the OTP code, it is impossible for the scammer to have access to your funds. Another way is if you gave out your ATM card last four digits to the scammer or you lost your ATM card and the scammer then have access to it. In my country people are so careless that when they loss their phones or misplaced their sim cards,they feel reluctant to go and retrieve it,if a scammer sees the phone or was the one that stole the phone, he goes straight to your message to see if there is any message from your bank and he uses that message to get information to have access into your account and steal your funds. We just need to be very careful on handling our documents or devices that have our information on them not to be exposed to people either on the internet or offline.

Most of the videos can be detected if we pay attention to the details but who knows how this AI will improve in the future and may create videos more than just realistic.

There is an article regarding this posted a few months back : AI deepfakes are getting better at spoofing KYC verification: Binance exec (https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/556451)

This can be controlled if the verification process is manual and done by an actual human or else this thing will get worse for sure.

This is not even possible. The reality of the world in which we live right now is that you must submit your KYC document or service , access will be denied you. Even if there are businesses that may not require KYC, they are like just 1%. Maybe the right recommendation should be to verify  whatever company you are submitting your documents to before you go ahead to do it. Another option is if you cannot entirely avoid them, if will make sense to have a like a "burner-KYC" document that can be submitted when required. Your main assets are safe if there is a breach or something.

They are more than 1% and considering the thousands of services available only a handful of them is needed for us to fulfill all the requirements we need.
If you do enough research you will find out alternative services which does not require you to dox yourself

A company can be as reputable as possible but your documents can still be compromised after you submit it to them and you cannot verify the process involved in the handling of the documents after it is submitted.

I will suggest three quick ways to avoid this kind of scam from those who are ready to make us cry in shedding tears over the loss of our coins.

1. Don't be greedy
2. Don't be too quick in making money
3. Research on any site before making deal with them and don't leave your sensitive informations online.

We need to be careful with the way we handle our personal information which have to be about our privacy, password, seed phrase or any private keys must bot be submitted to any only exchages together with other informations that may lead to tracking us from anywhere, email, wallet address, phone number, contact address and many more information should not be made available to the public as well, we don't know who may use them against us and attack.

Well whatever it is, we always have to be careful in sharing official documents and our personal data. Including centralized exchanges that are not too trusted. Not just a bunch of scammers from a p2p user or something. But actually there are also exchanges created to deceive their own users. Usually they are very low rated centralized exchanges. I had several withdrawal transactions that didn't even process. I contacted customer service and didn't get a serious response. Even the exchange telegram group was locked so that users could not send chats. In essence we are deadlocked on getting our funds back. Transactions can't even be canceled. So I gave up some of my money there.

And speaking of p2p there are actually buyers or sellers on Binance who don't require us to use a bank account in our own name. You can see them in some of the detailed terms they wrote. And usually I use it. But the majority does require us to use the same account name as the name we used to register on the stock exchange. But fortunately not all of them are like that.

Those victims that are giving their bank details and allows these culprits to gain access on it must really be too gullible at all and greedy at the same time.

Honestly, I can't imagine that someone goes to that point but it's a real thing because I've seen several posts in many socials that this happens. Too sad for those type of victims.

They're unsuspecting as well and whilst the banking details have been taken, there should be like a 2FA system from the bank to call the victim's name if unsuspected transaction has been made.

I detest providing KYC. In actuality, the only thing KYC does is give jobs to those who check the documents aside this, Cyber Criminals will always be able to find a means to carryout their nefarious activities especially financial crimes when they want to. If you have ever given out your KYC documents know that it can be sold out to a third party , or the organization may be forced by the law to supply the  information to the government or other dubious entities. The only real reason why KYC is enforced is so that the can government use it as a measure to control you whenever they choose or to sell your details like the one it the story so that your money can be stolen. That's the real purpose.

One thing which I did not get from the topic is what was the main purpose of first 2 or 3 lines like you could also start the topic without them but still you mentioned the ban on exchanges and tax etc. But afterwards you started to talk about KYC and how Airdrop hunters give away there personal details in those airdrops for the sake of useless tokens.

I agree with your points though but all I did not understand the point being made in first 1 or 2 lines. But still, I think it must have some relevancy so I might be wrong here.

And if we talk about KYC and we should not really do KYC in any airdrops even we should avoid to invest in airdrops too because what happens here is One or two airdrops when give huge profits then people in FOMO try not to leave any airdrop unattended and they try there luck on each and every airdrop even the requirements or task are so strict means they sometimes asking for KYC and in my opinion a wallet address is enough for a personal to provide it's details to win the airdrops because many airdrops gave huge rewards but lesser were there asking for KYC.

Simply, do not link your personal information to your bank account, that way you could avoid losing your money from your bank account. Or just avoid giving out all your information even when you see that there’s no shadow of scams, you may not be scam at the present but eventually your information will be used against you in the future. Caution is still the best key not to fall from every form of scam.

We've heard some incredulous quotes and have perceived and felt this is gonna happen in the future .... maybe the future is now?? Maybe not buh this has happened already, let's all learn from it.
Secondly, KYCs are usually made compulsory for most centralized exchanges or casino - this is gonna push some peeps in even more tight corners. If this hackers are basically looking for every means to dupe people, then they'll always do everything to facilitate Thier process.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

I find it strange that this could happen for two reasons:
- First, all accounts on peer-to-peer platforms require identity verification using facial identification, in addition to sending copies of the documents. How will the skimmer be able to authenticate the account using a fake identity if he does not have the same face as on the official documents, unless he is carrying out elaborate forgery operations, which he excluded due to the failure to guarantee the results of the attempt.
- Transactions on peer-to-peer platforms require closing the amount at the escrow address until one of the parties confirms that the transmission has been completed in order to release the amount. How can this happen using a bank account?

I believe the information you provide on this thread is enough to safeguard the rookies and the cryptocurrency users who barely care about the platform they are providing their personal document information. Meanwhile, the scammers do not only collect people's personal information through fake airdrops, they also do the same thing through bounty campaigns, and that's reason why the rookie must not participate in bounty campaigns is that the project will require KYC from them when they are not investors.
Many of these strategies are used to collect crypto enthusiast's email addresses and personal data.

Technology is growing at a rapid pace to the point that it becomes a problem for most of the users already. With AI, for sure this will happen even more in the future. Deepfake the pictures, AI, and a bit of knowledge is what the scammers need in order for this to be successful, and can't be detected by Binance.

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I always watch videos on Youtube regarding Indian Scammers that are being busted by these Youtubers. I find it very entertaining for these scammers to get busted, and who will not be knowing that they're very notorious in scamming people.

This is the reason why people must not give their personal information to the public ever. The problem with most of these investors is that, they're very gullible that when you say to them that they will give at least 20% interest, they will fall for it even though it costs them personal information including bank accounts. What's the solution for this? I guess letting them experience will teach them what to do next in the future. Letting them experience getting scammed will make them realize that "Ohhh I don't want to give my personal information to a random stranger anymore", but TBH, this is a no-brainer already because why in the hell will give your personal information into somebody that you don't know personally.

Overall, this post is all about awareness for those newbies out there who are trying to join into these scam telegram channels. Please don't join, don't give information to strangers, don't be too gullible, and be vigilant.

Damn, this is sad. I mean imagine you are scamming people online and then you get a case against you from Binance and you never did any transaction nor you have an account which got that money deposited. Binance surely needs to look into this if it's happening a lot. I mean, they need to make the P2P requirements much better and secure for others. And payments should only be allowed from pre-approved payment methods.

OP post should be taken seriously by airdrop hunter, like the new comers they thought putting information on the airdrop give them more chance, to win lots of money they are all.wrong instead their information sometimes passwords were collected and can be sold in the darkweb, sometimes also can be use by scammers in an airdrop, and pretend that the information is them.

Although that is true, and we should never compromise our personal documents and data for a few bucks shitty airdrops like the ones you mention grant, sometimes we have little to no choice, for example, if we want to trade a coin which is only listed in one exchange with mandatory KYC or to simply use any of the top, regulated, crypto (and not crypto) services.

We need a solution for this problem. How can we be identified and, at the same time, prevent our data from being leaked? could cryptography help?

I am still trying to understand how someone will be giving out his financial account details online to some entity he doesn't know in a chase for airdrops. That's one easy ways to be stupid you know!

For a person to complete a p2p transaction on binance you must have undergone different process of kyc and when you're the buy then it means you still undergo another KYC from your bank before you can transfer your funds. So for a scammer to be able to gain success in all of this process is either the bank is suffering from a weak security which makes it unfit for modern banking. Or the individual must be brainless to have render his bank pin, password, email address, and OTP,  but how's this possible to let out all these information to a stranger when you ain't at a gun pointed to your head?

You are right, and I think it will be very difficult for scammers to carry out these type of scams in Binance because of the face verification attached to its KYC proceedure. There are Some other exchanges that doesn’t ask for face verification and they only ask of some national identification cards and bank accounts details which make it easy for scammers to make use of these exchanges and create account with someone else documents on the platform. I think such exchanges should learn from Binance and adopt a face verification system to prevent this kind of scam from happening.

Scammers use Airdrop as a hub for their fraudulent activities; they use it to entice victims and obtain their personal information by offering them a small sum of money. As a result, we should exercise caution while participating in airdrops and when disclosing personal information in order to pass KYC verification and be qualified to receive a small number of tokens. There are now very few legitimate airdrops, and they are no longer worthwhile. Let's refrain from giving personal information to an unrecognised or untrustworthy website.

I'm still wondering how the scammers used the stolen data to create an account in Binance and set up a P2P trading account because if you want to set up a P2P trading account you will have to add your bank account details and a verification code will be sent to your phone number to prove you are the one setting up the P2P trading account. How do the scammers bypass the Binance P2P verification process

Is everyone who uses a centralized exchange gullible and greedy? Maybe you can argue such people are gullible, when they believe that the centralized exchange will keep their data safe, or keep their documents secure, or cares even the slightest about what happens to your KYC information. Every centralized exchange out there has leaked KYC data one way or another, whether it was a hack, sharing it with shady third parties, or even just selling it outright.

You always have a choice. You can choose not to trade that shitcoin or choose not to use that service. That's what I do, and I get by just fine. ;)

Once your KYC data has been leaked, it is almost trivial for a scammer to perform a SIM swap attack and take control of your phone number.

Most people don't know the risks when they submit their personal documents to CEX and other crypto platforms as these could be used by bad actors to cause great harm to them. I read this article^{[1] (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5444158.msg61884557#msg61884557)} by GazetaBitcoin, which reveals an interesting story of the identity theft of a young man whose life was wrecked apart by the scammer. This is one of the many ways KYC can be used against you, some persons are even languishing in jail for crimes they did not commit.

KYC should be avoided at all cost because of the dangers it pose. I do make use of Kucoin when it was a KYC free exchange, but the moment KYC became compulsory I had to stay away. DEX and P2P trading are better and safer.

1. What happens when your identity is stolen - real story || Avoid CEXs! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5444158.msg61884557#msg61884557)

Well people would everything just for the sake of earning something. Back then, I almost gave away my personal infor when airdrops were still like a hot topic here in the forum and good thing I didn't really do that. What's more alarming from this is that scammers might even do it through dark web and God knows what will happen to the victim once the people found out about not just the banking information but also their personal information.

Reality is people wouldn't stop risking that action until they encountered the consequences involved with it.

If we want to summarize I would say stay cautious in the crypto world. Protect your personal information, be mindful of KYC requests, and do your due diligence before engaging in any campaigns or airdrops. Let's all work together to create a safer environment for crypto enthusiasts, both new and experienced.

As, Promoting awareness and vigilance within the community is essential to ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits of the cryptocurrency space while minimizing the risks associated with it.

Far from it mate,  I think highest the identity theft can do is to create some fake accounts on some social media but having to involve the bank details or control of the bank account of the victim is no longer KYC document linkage,  for such extent of transaction to happen with victims account there most be either an insider or a time the bank account holder may have comprise the log in security of their bank account.
So I don't believe in that assumption that once your KYC documents are comprise your bank accounts are also comprised,  because this are two different things,  let not forget that,  most of the documents we provides during KYC are all public documents like ID,  Passport and signature,  this is all public information that anyone can get access to.

This is simply incorrect. In the US alone, identity theft affects ~40 million individuals each year and costs those individuals upwards of $50 billion:

https://javelinstrategy.com/2022-Identity-fraud-scams-report
https://javelinstrategy.com/research/2023-identity-fraud-study-butterfly-effect

Once someone has your identity, they can take out loans in your name, open credit cards in your name, use your insurance to rack up enormous bills, commit tax fraud in your name, and more.

What? In what country do you live that individuals' personal ID cards and passports are public information that anyone can look up?

Exactly, scammers can go any lent they want to try to get access and steal someone else's funds.
This is why keeping your funds in those exchanges is highly risky because they get your data when you pass the KYC verification, coupled with the fact that in the exchange in which you store your cryptos, you don't have the keys,  so you can easily get screwd.

Giving out your identity or passing the KCY process poses a gigantic kind of risk, it means that you have granted someone access to your privacy, and those details could be used to commit various cyber crimes if sold out. These cases are as a result of an insider job,



 

This is really unfortunate on the part of victims. They lose their money without knowing that they have deposited in an exchange and Binance is totally not aware of it. So maybe it’s a lesson that one should be cautious when and where to give his KYC that links to his account. Sometimes, scammers are not just outsiders from an exchange, but some scammers are actually doing inside job. Well that’s even more pathetic.

I think we have misunderstood ourselves a bit and I need to step in to clear something to make my point better understand by you boss,  what I meant by kyc documents being public document is in the sense that,  most of the documents we present for verifications are all documents that we have are requested and used by their party,  e.g your driver license which is use for kyc verification os a public document because the road safety can ask for it from you or even the police,  including the banks,.
So that point of view is where I am looking at it from that is said,  KYC document at public properties since it for their party usage.

It's pretty awful for an insider to do a dirty job like this. Many exchanges in the past have closed and have KYC data of their users and it is possible that this data can be sold so it is very risky. But some large Exchanges like Binance currently do not rule out the possibility of doing the same thing if they have a lot of user KYC data.
Depositing KYC is the choice of each user, or you can use fake KYC.

Yes, but not random people on the street. There is also a big difference between showing your drivers license to a single officer who pulls you over, and scanning it in to electronic send it with unknown security to an unknown third party for unknown storage and unknown distribution.

As you say, banks request to see these documents for proof of ID and to open accounts, loans, credit cards, etc. Given that, then you can clearly see why letting random strangers have access to these documents poses a massive financial risk.

Sometimes, one's boxed into a corner where one will have to provide certain documentations to enable one benefit from features on the sites one is on. For instance, to be able to enjoy the P2P facility on Cexs, one has to provide one's bank details to be able to transact there. So, you see, it's not that those who tender such are that stupid. There are security features allowed for users to strengthen their accounts (2FAs and all that) and most times these security breaches don't come from users but the exchanges when hacks happen on them and users' data base are compromised.

If whether merely submitting personal info that don't include bank details can lead to banks hacks, I don't think so. For those who always say it will, how does that work? If you want to say because names and addresses and phone numbers are given, don't we also have those information with the national identity card centres in our various countries? How come no one has looked into that as a possible way of bank account hacks too?

As far as I understand, the situation is more likely stealing from the person who's data is stolen/leak and then bought by that person and then use it to create a P2P account which is already considered as identity theft to be able to buy crypto using the victim's identity and money. I would say that this is more likely a financial theft and identity theft made by that person or a group of people. Well, it's up for others on how they see this situation but that's how I see it and anyway, the important thing is that you share it for other people to be aware of such scheme. After all, it's better to be safe than sorry.