Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

My bitcoin was stolen via a Google advertisement on New Year's Eve. The hackers very sneaky place an ad on Google searchengine that resembles the search result to log into your wallet at Blockchain.info. So if you search for "blockchain" then the fake ad is at the top. This can therefore also happen with other wallets. The hackers create an ad with a link that will forward you to the real login page, but they watch when you follow the login procedure and then steal your entire wallet in 2 minutes.

I would like to warn you never to just click on a search result and always log in via the website itself and check whether the link is correct. My "i" was written in (Blockchain) as an "l" (blockchaln). The hackers have destroyed and emptied the entire account. Then only error messages on error messages in the account.

Be careful now that the bitcoin is on very high course, they are all lurking those bastards.

Greetings!

Hopefully you reported the ad and site to Google right? They usually act VERY fast on shutting them down.
https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en

Unfortunately these phishing attacks are common and isn't isolated to Blockchain.com alone. There are quite a few affecting Electrum as well. Either use an ad block to block Google Ads or just ignore the ads. None of the wallets that I've seen actively advertises their own sites.

Google is fairly slow at responding to these actually. The site is most commonly just a redirection to another phishing page, probably to evade automated detection and more will just spawn up.

Looks like you're new to this space OP. Make sure to check out the beginner's board since there are a lot of threads that discussed the modus operandi of these scammers. Learn and protect your funds.

Other than this one, the e-mail phishing trick is quite popular and who knows how many people fall for the same old trick over and over again.

Actually, it already happened to different wallets.
For instance:
[1] 2 new Metamask phishing site thru Google Ads (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5295719.0)
[2] {Warning}: Exodus phishing website in Google (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5274992.0)
[3] Atomic wallet's phishing website is being promoting in google's ads. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5274235.0)

Thus, we should not be recklessly browsing on Google. As the top google searches are filled with ads, always check the URL to see the difference. To prevent such circumstances, you can bookmark the official website, so you don’t have to do searches to visit it.

The more Bitcoin gets more valuable and attractive, the more the number of scammers and hackers will keep increasing, while they keep advancing their skills and tactics so as to achieve their aims, hence we need to take note of every possible security steps we can think of.
So sorry for what happened to you, but henceforth, on every Important website you visit which relates to crypto and which involves you to access your wallet just like this one you reported, or exchanges etc, once you visit the website bookmark it immediately and from there always access the website, it's safer that way. As for exchanges, you can visit coinmarketcap or Coingecko as the case may be, search the exchange, visit it and bookmark; i find this approach better and safer, because phishing scam is getting much.

Similar trend is continuing with the telegram platform. Google advertising is much used service to widen businesses. The same is used as a trap with the people who aren't aware about the scams happening through the same. When it comes to telegram, there are support people resembling the same as the original website service. This easily makes people fall as a prey. When the market keeps growing and growing there'll be more number of hackers and scammers around to profit out of the common users.