Bitcoin Forum

There is a new scamming strategy on the horizon, newbies be on the watch out

Optimism airdrop is still active and that's why some scammers have come up with a NFT/Coupon Ticket style way to trap unknown victims, especially their ones that have interacted with the optimism chain before.

https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/50/5d/nm3MSiMS_t.jpg

The image of the NFT has all the information available, I can swap this NFT for 1000 OP token, I believe this will be confusing for newbies who aren't familiar with scammers way of doing things.

Optimism.market is the place or the right place to sell this NFT for 1000 OP tokens and I do visited the market place and I got a very bad warming from my browser to stay away, here is what the warning looks like.

https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/c1/69/PV0EqM8e_t.jpg

I bet what's ahead is very dangerous, you will have to connect your wallet and that is where all your assets will be moved out automatically, Be cautious out here.

If they want airdrop from Optimism, they must follow up Optimism's official website and channels.

That website isn't from Optimism project and fortunately the browser shows a warning when anyone visiting that site. I am sure that warning only appears after some people reported that scam, phishing site. So if you are the first one falls to that scam site, you might be scammed by them.

What to do to avoid phishing sites (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5171134.msg52024710#msg52024710)

Optimism airdrops have been around for a while and just like the first comment made it clear that there is a warning to point out that this one is a scam attempt so that potential airdrop hunters can be guided that the site their want to visit is unsecured but of anyone overlooked that warning it is then the hunter will have himself to be blamed.


This kind of scam/phishing attempt is popular these days and airdrop is one of the most popular means they get the victim scammed, in either having them connect the wallet to their layer two wallets for distribution of the reward but at the end, they steal wallet details and thereafter taking control of the wallet.

I have always maintained that airdrops should be avoided altogether cause they pose more risks than potential of profits. This may seem like an overkill to some but engaging in something that risks your privacy and your assets at the same time with little promise of getting any substantial value out of it should be avoided.

With each new day, scammers get more and more opportunities to profit from human ignorance and greed, and at the moment I don't see any quick and easy way to prevent them from doing so. For all those who can't resist all those "lucrative offers" I can only advise to be extremely careful, and I would also agree with @Upgrade00 that the best way to protect yourself is to not deal with such things.

The Internet is something that offers countless possibilities, but in addition to the good things, it also has its bad side, which is full of lies and deceptions that lead to where no one wants to end up. Unfortunately, cryptocurrencies (and by that I mean altcoins and NTF) are a perfect tool for all those who have bad intentions, and there are a lot of them online.

Not even that — the Optimism $OP token has been airdropped a few months ago already, and I'm pretty sure they can't claim it anymore today, nor will the Optimism team promote the token on social media.

Thanks for this warning. I got the same warning when I tried it out. It's now been obvious for everyone to be careful with the coins, tokens and NFTs offer these days, many of them are not genuine but are just there to steal your money.

Albeit, it will be foolish of anyone in this internet age to connect their account with an unfamiliar website. Such shouldn't happen no matter how trusting they could appear, especially when what they are offering is too good to be true.

Be wise!

I second this because the era of where airdrops pay are far behind us but that doesn’t mean there aren’t airdrops that pay again but if you participate in like 60 it is possible you will only get rewarded for like 3, the latest was the arbitrum and the Pepe token, and in it is not even enough. The only way to avoid phishing attack through them aside totally avoid them is to use a separate wallet aside the wallets that is used to store ones funds so that when a phishing attempt is made you won’t have to bother or worry of losing your funds

Unfortunately, such phishing methods are very common. You can see many scam ads about them especially on social media. There are plenty of them on places like Facebook and Twitter, there are similar scams on Telegram and Discord. You shouldn't connect your wallet anywhere you don't know. Protecting your multicoin wallet is more difficult than protecting your Bitcoin.
Remember that no one will give you money for nothing. If you do tasks for potential airdrops, only follow the official announcement channels and remember that they can also be hacked. Always be on the alert. Money is hard earned and easily lost in this business. If it's too good to be true, it's probably a scam. Although there are many warnings about this, one can catch it in a careless moment.

As for Optimism, the airdrop has already been done. I don't think there will be a new airdrop. Be aware of new projects that don't distribute their coins yet. I see too many scam airdrop links for ZkSync and Starknet lately. If the project is popular, there is more and more scam promotion about it.

The problem is, how can a beginner who is eager to get involved in the airdrop know the difference between the official website and the fake website?

I think the general advice should be that we should avoid airdrops because scammers are using the airdrop channel to scam beginners.

Most airdrops end up being scams, which is why some coins that advertise through airdrops are not getting the attention they need in the public market because most people cannot trust the project unless they follow various advertising systems that involve bounty and signature campaigns.

These scammers are so trickish that even experienced people in cryptocurrency that ain't careful enough may easily fall for it not to talk of newbies. These scammer could actually make an unnoticeable change to a site like putting a dot or a comma or anything of sort that at a click in your ignorance it redirect you to their phishing site intercepting your data unknown to you. People should be absolutely meticulous while scouting for these airdrops making sure to differentiate between a genuine site and an infiltrated one.

Op thanks you for bringing this to notice of all. I thought NFT airdrop is no long in existence. This information now not only for newbies but also to other ranks in the forum.
Scammers always have a trick to scam unsmart people but it is hard for them to scam the smart people. Because those people will detect them once they see them. And one thing is to avoid any fast way of making money online. If anyone wants to make money online fast then the person must be scam by them. Stay away from any trap from those guys.

You asked a very good question because these scam websites have almost the same physical appearance as the original ones and can be hardly distinguished. But I have always known that the days of getting any coin for doing nothing have come and gone. So we need to be careful when these platforms come up with certain packages that are too lucrative. High profitability will always be the bait that will entice people to embrace these platforms. I have decided not to take part in most of these coins, tokens, and NFTs this is because I have not developed the needed skills to identify these fake coins. It will be better to only deal in coins that have shown to be reliable and genuine.

As an airdrop hunter you should be watchful to these kind of potential fraud. Of course a lot will be delighted to receive an airdrop but be desperate that forgot to check all details and fall on a wrong one. If a big project like optimism would do another airdrop then its must be announce on their official social sites not like this.

There was a time when it was the era of airdrops and scammers did not know how to use it to scam people, some people benefited from it. But now I will advise other newbies like myself to be careful of airdrops and trying to make profit off from them. Airdrops sound like casino bonuses to some newbies to Cryptocurrency, they are interested in getting something free that is why they still consider airdrops. Many airdrop hunters that are newbies will be scammed from this, I feel sorry for them.

This is, what a phishing site and ads look like, to which people fall prey and lost their access to highly financed wallets and have to lose all their money. I am glad your browser saved you and you stopped there and did not fall prey to this website offering high rewards. But many people with less knowledge will definitely fall for it. You have done great work here, but you should also share the source from where you got that link of earning this many tokens because that depends more, and you should report that post to and account also.

I wasted a lot of my time in airdrops back in 2022 but got not that much profit because i afraid to perform all that tasks (idk why i was afraid but i gave up by participating in a few). We all should follow the official platform of such airdrops and should not connect to any website, and should remain more careful after the big airdrops because that is when real FOMO starts and people starts to perform a task in every airdrop they hear about.

This only means that the group of people or the person behind this so called airdrop planned to scam those who are fooled by this. We knoe that scammers will do their best to make it look like real or legit in our eyes. I can give advice to whoever see this must avoid it at cost and that's the only advice I can give so they won't lose their money from such scheme. If I am a newbie then I would follow what I just advice newbies to do when they see this and they should so make some research if it is real or not to avoid getting scammed by them.

I might be the last person to get entrapped by cheap airdrop reward, Just as hd49728 said whomever that needs a reliable airdrop could easily find them in their official page. There is this love for newbies concerning airdrop token like never before why are they emphasising on airdrops like never before or are they too lazy to search and know if it was the right sources or not.
Airdrops are the easiest way to scammed people and they should try as much as possible to avoid it otherwise their wallet might got compromised.

This is the reason why we use secured browsers; at least most of them will be able to identify a few cheaper phishing sites that are unsafe and give a warning to the newbies who are visiting the site. It's now up to them to take the warning seriously, or they can just ignore it and take the risk of losing everything they have.

Even if the site or the project itself looks too real and has a lot of ratings, if the link is not from them officially, it's enough reason for us to consider everything that comes outside a scam. Even when it comes from the project that has proposed the airdrop directly, it's also highly advisable for one to know which wallet he or she is connecting to on a third-party site. Any Web3 project in which I find interest, I usually create a separate wallet for security reasons so as not to completely lose my holdings because of some careless move.
Thanks for the information and the warning to newbies who might not be informed of the scam.

I see how enticing is that, it is somewhat huge that those who have greedy souls will certainly be joining. But doesn't worry me anyway because I'd never joined airdrops anymore. We see how determined these scammers and they'll be working hard to find a way how to scam innocent individuals as they don't stop hunting people who are in their mind is all about money and getting it in an easy way.

And this warning serves us to be more careful about participating in airdrops especially when we need to register on their site. Honestly, we can expect more of these scam attempt and these usually happen in free drops.

I think I have said this before here: a little of my assets have been jacked in the past due to all this airdrop nonsense. I wasted my time doing airdrops when I first started my cryptocurrency journey, thinking it was the right way to learn about cryptocurrency and also earn while you are learning. But as the saying goes, "the more you learn, the more you know." I learned until I realized that airdrop is just a waste of time, ability, and internet browsing data. I hope the quicker everyone, mostly newbies, realizes that the airdrop is just a waste of time for them, the better. Otherwise, they will still get scammed because they think they are earning free crypto.

Like they could've at least promote a fake airdrop of well known platforms/protocols that doesn't have a token yet lmao (there's like a lot of them). But I guess the smarter bunch of crypto peeps aren't their target in the first place..

The real optimism airdrop was already done and whilst it's a success for the project itself for its launching. The scammers never stop trying to hook off some victims that are still interested of the project's airdrop.

That's actually their targets, those greedy people that are not doing their research and probably aren't aware that the airdrop was done. I've seen people that have already been a victim of these fake optimism airdrop even if they're aware that it's done, they just reasoned out that they just wanna try and what if it's true.

I knew Optimism airdrop was distributed months ago, too long ago. The advice is general and not only for Optimism airdrop.

It is not only about airdrop but getting official information from official websites and channels is good method to reduce your risk to be phished and scammed.

Official websites, official social media channels and always double check information. Doing so before connecting wallets and interacts with smart contracts.

OP, That's not even new. Scammers keep recycling and tweaking their strategies whenever they feel they aren't getting enough catch from them.

Sensibly, that should be the first call of action from anyone. Sadly, most people wouldn't even remember to check them because of their greed to rush and claim what they think is from Santa Claus 😆. I've always maintained that there's no free lunch anywhere. Look closely whenever one is offered and you will discover there's a catch somewhere. Maybe before 2017, airdops were a thing and profitable then but I don't think they're this day. Newbies, beware.

Optimism airdrop was over months ago, but it's possible for someone to fall for this if they have somehow do transactions with Optimism before, the first easy bait was the NFT coupon idea, truth be told, this is new to me, and I am sure it will be new to many people out there, but where things don't add up is you trying to sell the NFT because you can easily find optimism telegram group through coinmarketcap and ask the team directly before doing any transaction, that's where every truth will come to light.

Thanks for sharing still, because it is possible for a newbie to go ahead and try to sell the NFT without any research, they will think that the highest thing to happen is them not be able to sell successfully, and they won't know that this move will come with a price.

The reason I'm not too interested in Airdrops is because I want to anticipate incidents like this, this type of Airdrop causes more harm than benefits. Asset privacy needs to be maintained so that illegal transactions do not occur when the wallet is connected with Optimism.market.
This method is very commonly used, but strangely there are still victims of fraud who use this type. Newbies need to avoid anything that offers free tokens at all costs, safety of assets is more important than hunting for something that is uncertain.

Right. Regardless if we are living in this digital age or not, it’s still a foolishness to fall into too good to be true promises. That’s certainly a red flag and so we have to deal it more cautiously. Still thanks OP for the reminder. And surely, a lot of newbies have already fall to this scammer’s traps so we should be more responsible with our own wallet’s security so we won’t be regretting later on.

That’s a good advice but I don’t think they will be able to learn if they don’t try experiencing it. This is why study first and read the site reviews so you will get an idea if that is an official or fake one. For sure once the site is being faked, a lot of participants will post their complaints so they can also raise awareness for those who are eager to enter. And always invest that you can afford to lose.

Actually it's not a new trick, scammers just recycle their old tricks because they understand that new and gullible users get introduced into the market yearly especially during bull season that just ended two years ago. They're hoping that they can get some escape goat from their recent attempt (and they'll get them because people never learn). New recruit need to understand that you shouldn't use your main wallets for anything airdrop or giveaway. Let's consider you don't get attack but you're exposing yourself by doing so and making your wallet to be linked to your identity. You should have a separate wallets for your online activities like airdrop and giveaway and they shouldn't be used to hold any of your coins you decide to buy.

Get those coins to your main wallets and you'll be safe from all this hacks that results from you connecting your wallets to a malicious website. Besides airdrops aren't free anymore and those that are free shoudn't be worth your time because they're usually worthless. Follow other advise given by those above me and you'll be in good hands. Finally be skeptical about anything you read online especially those that have to do with cryptocurency and not from the source of the project. Scammers can go to any length to make their scams look legitimate therefore we have to be extremely careful or we become victims.

We know one of the major way to caught the attention of the people is giving free money I've been victim of this before like phishing, because of getting overlooked those links.
After clicking that link could be possible a malware could enter once you execute the action better to take a look with your computer and check if there's nothing injected in your device.

That's the thing that we have to avoid. Scammers use this tactic as everyone (probably) got tempted when seeing it. This is why scammers win despite the crusade that we do against them and they still exist because people haven't learned yet. Very unfortunate and it happens that we need to lose and get scammed before we realized how this is going on. These days, online activities are too risky and much in dealing with someone that we never know especially when talking about money as scams are really possible and all of us can be their target.

Airdrops today are not as reliable and profitable like it is before. That is why it’s hard to trust these days in all forms of airdrops especially that most that are launched today end up as scams. So it’s better to avoid it earlier so you won’t put your assets in danger and your account in susceptible to hacking. While newbies easily fall for it, but for veterans in the market, airdrops are no longer valuable these days.

There is always high risk of losing for beginners when it comes to trusting and participating airdrops. Aside that they don’t know if the site is legit or not, these beginners may easily fall for scams since they always see airdrops as another source for quick profits. So if they can avoid airdrops no matter how promising it is, then definitely the better and safer for them.

Yes, thank you OP for bringing this topic. Not all of us here are aware of this especially for newbies who always take advantage once there are huge money involved. And the fact that airdrops are not that reputable unlike before, then we should try to spare from it seeing a lot of victims today have lose their money on airdrops that promise them for high returns. You can always be profitable by buying bitcoin, but never in engaging in airdrops that will only make your capital at risk.

Thank you OP for making us aware about this. I have been avoiding airdrops these past few months due to its high risk of scamming. But I think this reminder will be very helpful for starters. Instead of taking advantage to avail this kind of tokens from airdrops, why not invest your capital in bitcoin where chances of making you real profitable is high and achievable.

The browser literally declared it dangerous to continue, and If a user still go ahead with the Optimism drop then he or she isn't going to be affected much as they are already broke.
On the other hand, no one should try to connect your wallet with any random website. DeFi is dangerous, this is the only reason. many scams are happening on the daily basis, it's difficult to survive.

Knowing how promising airdrops usually are in terms of it's profits gain no amount of warning for avoidance would be heeded. Ad a matter of fact the idea that a coin that had a value below a cent would then rise up in value to a dollar plus when launched is something not everyone can be disciplined enough to avoid despite how somewhat risky it poses.

it turns out that scam models like this still exist and are growing. it is undeniable that the more new projects there are, the more scans will appear in the crypto world. because this is really promising for scammers. and also looking at the schematic of the scam model, doesn't it look very real? I hope that especially Newbies can be more careful and not directly believe the various information provided in schemes like this.

Yes. you are right they will not stop. Scammers are constantly finding innovative ways to scam unsuspecting individuals, especially in the cryptocurrency space. The situation you describe at least has a message never try to link a wallet with any random website that has not been thoroughly investigated or is still in doubt.

There is saying that experience is actually the best teacher and we learn very fast from our mistake and best from the mistakes of other and thats the notion I have been abiding on because since I started my own crypto journey I have been invited by so many people about this so called airdrops and most of them looks so real and could make you feel you have hit a jackpot but due to several warnings of forum members in the community I have turned a blind eye to all these airdrops. I would be a fool to fall for scam which I have been previously warn about and even greed cannot make me commit such errors.

Indeed, a newbie will find it extremely challenging to distinguish between real and fake airdrops because they have no prior knowledge of airdrops, making it impossible for them to do the same for real and phoney websites. If newbies are interested in participating in airdrops, they should take the time to research all the requirements; otherwise, it would be best if they stayed away from them. It's no longer necessary for me to participate in airdrops because the most of them are either scams or offer meagre payments.


As a beginner in the cryptocurrency industry, all you'll want to do at first is earn a free token, and since you don't know anything about the industry or scams, you'll just keep clicking on links that say "earn a free token." They get scammed in this manner. Nowadays, legitimate airdrops are extremely hard to find, therefore beginners should stay away from them. 

You did great with your talks and the truth is I basically   don't get moved with aridrops and I don't enjoy clicking on  some random links and that's why I wouldn't click on a link if I don't have my mal ware and and anti-virus open.
Nevertheless,  there are several ways to detect phasing sites and your link is a great eye opener because I never took out time before now to check through this.

I hope alot of newbies, not just forum newbies but cryptocurrency newbies in general who are in a haste to make  money off cryptocurrency to take things easy so as not to fall into scams like this and be very careful of any site asking for your wallet address.

If I show you my old email, which I used for some of those airdrops in the past years, up until now, I've kept receiving countless numbers of emails for Airdrop invitations, and the reason why it's so is because I signed up my email to a lot of those airdrop sites for news letters. Some come as updates, some as spam. I wouldn't even advise anyone to waste their time on airdrops. But it's funny that when someone keeps disturbing me about how to earn free crypto, I usually tell them they can do some airdrops, but I do warn them beforehand that even if they spend their time on airdrops, it could become a waste of time and effort. Also, the situation is that during the process of those airdrops, you can still get scammed, like I was.



Cheers 🥂, Dr.Bitcoin_Strange 👺👺

Some of the plots by the scammers who sponsors all those airdrops is to gain access to the hunter wallet and steal all the coins stored in them and by doing so what they used most is wallet connect this way the airdrop hunter will grant them access in to the wallet without even knowing and Thai have resulted into many scam and wallet-draining recently.


And just as you rightly said,  airdrop or bounty should be clearly avoided since the risk level is very high and the possibility of making anything out of it,   so  end up

We have this mentality to take advantage of what's free. There's always this logic that you're not paying for it so what can you lose? If I can get a dollar out of it, it's still worth it because it's for free. And who knows, it could explode in the future? So freebies, airdrops, giveaways, and the like are usually being used as baits. It's taking advantage of the psychological effects of this word free.

Alas, even a single click is actually enough payment. In the end, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

You are correct that it should be avoided because even taking risks can cause some people to fall victim to these con artists. While many people are interested in air drops, I personally have no feelings for any of them because I have seen someone who has been taken advantage of by them. These days, many air drops are designed more to pique people's interest and gain access to their wallets than to provide actual goods, and once they have your wallet, they will withdraw all the losses you have suffered for a while. My recommendation to newcomers is to be smart and not let other people or potential exploiters fool them. These days, air drops should not be trusted.
I don't say this to suggest that airdrops are bad, but these days they are more expensive than they were in the past, and even if they are, it's still better to avoid them than take a chance.

With the rise of airdrops, scammers try to take part by offering various kinds of promotions or providing shortcuts to get the airdrop. Many people have experienced this and have been scammed by obscure airdrop programs.

But the problem is that beginners don't think so because they keep looking for airdrop programs that might give them big profits. That is why they keep joining many airdrop programs to get free tokens and store them in hopes that they can sell them on the market at a high price.

I haven't played in airdrops in a long time because I often hear about scams from those obscure airdrop programs. People should also be careful if they want to join an airdrop program and always make sure that it is not a program launched by scammers and that it is not an easy thing to be able to identify scammers.

I do recommend OP that you post this on the scam accusation website so everyone can be informed about this warning and threat to newbies about this.

While such project may have their official website, you can never be so sure due to the frequency that these scammers create these types of scams. They tend to almost rinse and repeat every aspect of airdrops, fake giveaways, and other similar acts in order to attract the attention of curious newbies. Even if this kind of act is not new, it is still recommended to post these kinds of warnings for everyone to know.

Remember that prevention is better than cure. Newbies, always be cautious whenever you see giveaways like these. If something is almost too good to be true, always doubt it and overthink it!

You captured it well. Those who want to capitalize on the purported freebies often get themselves burnt by it. It's a bait. For me I believe there's no free meal anywhere, one has to sweat it out first before reaping the benefit. I've had to argue with those who say that since there isn't going to be any monetary commitment on their part they aren't losing out on anything even if it goes sour. My question to them is always "What about your time invested in it?" Time, they say, is money.

Their is certain stage you will find yourself you won't be able fall a victim of scam, while so many people who has experience scam campaigns is to eliminate scam and put newbies at alert to know that scam exists, their is some people in this platform that is six and eight months old that have not experience any kind of scam but with this kind of post if they come across of the thread they will be able to understand exactly what cryptocurrency is all about.

Honestly i prefer to work for signature campaigns or articles campaigns than get my self involved in airdrops, this thing is unpredictable, and we end up revealing our personal informations for no just cause. thanks for setting this out there to help everyone not just the NEWBIES ....

That is it. This is exactly a scam airdrop. We can analyze their official website, blog, and social media, there is no such kind of airdrop program done by the official team. So, be careful newbies.
because this is actually seemingly very interesting and very worthy to follow because of the rewards. But, the scammers are always like this. Offering very worthy rewards, but they deceive the victims because they only want to steal our assets. Here, watch out all.

Yes, experience is the best teacher for us. But how do we take lessons and also the next decision from that experience that might be different. because sometimes a person only needs 1 experience and can already learn from it. but there are also those who have to do it many times.