How to Spot Scam Airdrops

Quote from: ElcinB on June 07, 2018, 09:28:38 PM

There are huge number of AirDrops around us and the number of SCAM ones is big as well! Unfortunately most of us identify them, only after being victim of it. However, if there was any sort of criteria to detect them beforehand, AirDrop hunters would be more prepared.

Based on my research I introduce you some points and hints trough which you will be able to examine each AirDrop.

Basically AirDrops could be divided into two groups:
1) Special "project" which was initially created aiming theft
2) Fake AirDrops which hide behind Real ICOs and Projects
The example of former one could be ZillowBlockchain, if you look for this project, you won't find neither official website nor social and media accounts. Talking about latter ones, fake airdrops of EOS, Cube or even Quarkchain(during ICO) will be the brilliant examples. These "projects" desire to steal your personal data and assets and for sure you won't get anything back.

Now let's look deeper and learn what kind of frauds take place.

First and the most widespread one is phishing method. It begins when you register in AirDrop and provide your email, usually a bit later you receive letter which tells you to pass KYC process and provide your personal data to be eligible to receive the tokens. There will be a link to similar website like MyEtherWallet or some other exchange, and there will be written to provide your Private Key or Password to prove that you are owner of that wallet or profile. If you do so, scammers instantly will empty your wallet before you'll even notice that. The second method, which is becoming popular over the past six months is sending ETH to receive AirDrop tokens. These types of scam-airdrops usually use prominent and hotly discussed projects and hide behind them, posing themselves as real ones. They use simple but effective way of a fraud, they ask you to send Ether in order to receive tokens and moreover they ensure you that your Ether will be sent you back as well along with "free" tokens. The last one which I came across uses more advanced technique. This is how they work: They actually create an ERC20 token and hold an AirDrop campaign, they send their tokens to all registered users and gain their trust. However, this is not the end, after distributing their coins they send to all their users message that they have launched next stage of AirDrop and in order to participate users have to do what?... right send ETH. And reason why people are sending their funds is that at very first AirDrop scammers gave the value to their tokens such as 1000 scamcoins = 1 Ether, and in the second one they claim that users will be able to purchase 10 000 scamcoins for the same single Ether.
Above I tried to explain and review what kind of Scam Airdrops exist and how they work. Now you have necessary knowledge and I hope that you'll use it properly

P.S. Here are some points to which you should pay attention before participating in Airdrop:
Huge reward for the Airdrop, if it's too high (by high I mean from $300 to $1000) it's 99% probability that you encountered with scam;
Address of website, pay careful attention to the domain address of website scammers try to use very similar one.
Example: myetherwallet.com vs myehterwallet.com;
Asking for donation or private key/password, if any kind of airdrop will ask you one of that it means it's scam. Remember your personal data and funds are not needed to send you free tokens.

Great tips. thanks