Bitcoin Forum

I've just received an email trying to sell ads on BitcoinTalk. It can from the address BitcoinTalk.ads@gmail.com.
I know this is a phishing scam since the same thing happened to me with Coindesk a few weeks ago and this email uses the same methods.
http://99bitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/BitcoinTalk-phishing-email.jpg


I've marked the email as phishing and if you received this email you should do so to.

Update - I've just written a blog post (http://99bitcoins.com/almost-got-scammed-alleged-coindesk/) about the whole story.
Good luck.

I'm guessing they will provide you with a BTC address to send coins to but your ad will never show up on the site since they're not the real admin right? Or are they trying to steal usernames and passwords somehow?

Its probably not a phishing scam but just trying to scam you out of money by thinking youre getting forum adds. Somebody was scammed a bit ago like this but via the forum.

From my experience with the at "Coindesk" I almost sent out my BTC but realized it at the last moment. My guess is that they are not trying to steal usernames.

You're correct - it's not a "phishing scam" per se...but it's still a scam.

How come they got your e-mail?

I thought the same, there isn't any phishing link thus not making it a phish but it is a surefire scam.

I only use this email addy on this site and I have been getting heaps of virus, spam, phishing emails.
The site has been hacked a few times but Theymos swears the hacker could not of gotten the email list, even though they had access to the backend for like 6 months........... Interesting ay.

That was exactly my thought.
Does anyone know if email list got leaked?

The email addresses must of got leaked if this is the only place you use the email and are getting Bitcoin spam and virus emails.

Wow interesting. Although it seems that people advertising on Bitcointalk are a rather niche-group and not an especially large target audience. I guess it'll be hard finding people interested in advertising here. Where did they get the email addresses from?

That's sad, I thought there weren't issues like this on this forum.

There've been leaks before. Remember some 3/4 year ago or so, there was a major break-in and many addresses or data got stolen. Theymos had to shut the forum down for a couple of days. Spooky times!

I really don't think the email list got leaked. They are just sending this out to general addresses like admin@website.com and info@website.com.
Since I capture all emails sent to my site this got captured also.
Here's the latest update :) look at how clever these guys are...
http://99bitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Bitcointalk-scam-email.jpg

I believe the forums were hacked into sometime last year and a database of emails was leaked. It was around the same time the ability to change one's own avatar was disabled.

Since these guys did the same thing with Coindesk (look here (http://www.coindesk.com/phishing-alert/)) I still can't believe they actually have my email. Like I said they sent it to an email address that doesn't even exist and I just captured it on the way.

Good to know anyway. Luckily I only use my mail for this forum.

Apparently the email list was not leaked and everyone gave me shit and said it was just me... but that is clearly not the case.
I made a thread.. inquiring about this. it was probably 3-4 months old... possibly a bit longer.

Anyways we have no evidence it was leaked.. other than my email addy getting these weird emails.

I very rarely conduct forum business outside of forum PMs. If "I" do, you should ask me to PGP-sign my messages.


Go reread the emails I sent out after those incidents and you'll see that I told people to assume that their email addresses were compromised.

However, since no one has ever published any accurate data from the forum's database, I tend to think that the attackers did not download large chunks of the forum's database, or at least they didn't share this data. For example, as far as I know, no one has ever published a list of Satoshi's IP addresses as used on the forum or his password hash. There have been very few cases of people complaining of increased spam on their forum email addresses, so I believe that these cases are actually unrelated to the forum (even if you think that your email address was unused anywhere else).

I've just put up a detailed blog post (http://99bitcoins.com/almost-got-scammed-alleged-coindesk/) about the whole story including all the email correspondence I had.

I wonder if people actually fall for this kind of e-mails since it makes no sense "at least ask them to contact you through btctalk from theymos" lol . Anyway I wonder where did they get there bitcoin-related e-mail list though.

It is also possible that someone has tried to register with your email address and got an error message saying that your email address is already associated with an account. The attacker would then know that you have an account on bitcointalk.org and that your email is associated with that attack.

Yep. I've got one today. I wonder if the link contained a trojan also. Looks suspicious.

I got one of these emails today...

I played along, but after they saw which business I wanted the add for, they told me they weren't interested in selling me an add
Bwhahahahahaha