Crypto giveaway scams and how to spot them

[EdvinZ]

This is a very valuable topic, especially for newcomers to the cryptocurrency space. When you see an ad about giveaways, you should always check the information on official websites. Usually, if someone promises to return a large amount for transferring cryptocurrency to the address of the giveaway organizer, this is a hundred percent fraud. The main rule is to always check information on official websites!

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[bgaf]

Actually we can spot it easily, the giveaway scam usually too good to happening.
If you require to send 0.1 eth to receive 1 eth, then it is clearly scam. Why don't they just give you 0.9 eth in the first place ?
Giveaway should be an easy task, just give your address and you get the reward, thats it.

I dont know who believe on this trick. This is not new and remember a giveaway doesnt have a payment in order to have rewards therefore if there is its not a giveaway anymore. Task are included oj some give away but if they require you to send money then think twice if your gonna give it cause you participate to win some prizes right? Why the hell your giving them any penny. Its a logical stuff but that is not hard to grasp when dealing with giveaway.

Out of many twitter post Ive seen, some are just even using participants like follow, retweet, but their main goal is to lure some subscriber then they will announced winner but the truth is the winner will be the the same person or affiliated account of them. Viola no funds spent and gain some followers.

[lobo13hf]

Actually we can spot it easily, the giveaway scam usually too good to happening.
If you require to send 0.1 eth to receive 1 eth, then it is clearly scam. Why don't they just give you 0.9 eth in the first place ?
Giveaway should be an easy task, just give your address and you get the reward, thats it.

Even we just need to pay less than 10 cents to do a one tx to get our airdrop tokens from the smartcontract. These scammers are playing on the quantity over the quality. That's why they have asked a small amount deposit to receive the reward. The giveaway must be a free at least if that can be done easily like TWT airdrop.

[Vanessamix]

Its easy to determine if a giveaway is legit or not. If the giveaway asking to transfer a money before participating then its abvious scam attempt .
Another things is if a giveaway is giving a high return from the asked amount you need to deposit then its the same.
This kind of scheme is not only happening in twitter its also use in other social media such as facebook youtube and telegram.

People are quite used to pay online for some sort of valuable service.
And I assume many of them don't see any difference between paying for netflix or for some of these "profitable" schemes

[FairUser]

Actually we can spot it easily, the giveaway scam usually too good to happening.
If you require to send 0.1 eth to receive 1 eth, then it is clearly scam. Why don't they just give you 0.9 eth in the first place ?
Giveaway should be an easy task, just give your address and you get the reward, thats it.

Yes. But there are still a lot of greedy and ignorant newcomers in this market. They are still stuck with such scams, there won't be anything free in this market. Even airdrops, we need to do the tasks that are required by them in order to receive rewards

[DrawAthens031]

The way scammers spread their trap all the time is almost impossible to get out of that trap, because once someone logs in with a giveaway created by them, you are threatened with leaving all your information to scammers. And the risk of investing is huge. People should always make effort to do proper findings specially newbies  .

[Kaliecious]

I often get emails like this, but I don't care because I know it's a scam.
When I get the news, I first check the truth on the official account to make sure
maybe the scammer collects crypto member email data to spread it throughout the database.

[NextDoor125]

In this conflict, I have given many views before, and have noticed that many users are not aware of their steps, so they are considering keeping their assets or invested money safe. About all those blockchain users I just say invest money by not judging by emotion but by conscience.

[SistaFista]

I haven't see any good and real crypto giveaway for sometime, and i think it won't be exist for now.
There are many fake gievaways on youtube, the scammers are still trying to scam peoples there.
We should be very careful when we need to send our money for get multiple comebacks, most of them are fake.

[suryana]

I haven't see any good and real crypto giveaway for sometime, and i think it won't be exist for now.
There are many fake gievaways on youtube, the scammers are still trying to scam peoples there.
We should be very careful when we need to send our money for get multiple comebacks, most of them are fake.

They target beginners who just enter into the Crypto world, usually beginners are easy to believe when lured in with a Giveaway. The scammers send via email then when someone clicks on the phishing email link, important data will be successfully stolen. I hope beginners to be extra careful about this.

[makishart]

Actually we can spot it easily, the giveaway scam usually too good to happening.
If you require to send 0.1 eth to receive 1 eth, then it is clearly scam. Why don't they just give you 0.9 eth in the first place ?
Giveaway should be an easy task, just give your address and you get the reward, thats it.

Yes. But there are still a lot of greedy and ignorant newcomers in this market. They are still stuck with such scams, there won't be anything free in this market. Even airdrops, we need to do the tasks that are required by them in order to receive rewards

Those newcomers never try to learn or they were very lazy. There are so many awareness thread about this problem and they are still joining in almost all of the airdrop and crypto giveaway and try to send some money to the scammer.
How we can educate them all when they are still become ignorant

[FrozenBit]

I haven't see any good and real crypto giveaway for sometime, and i think it won't be exist for now.
There are many fake gievaways on youtube, the scammers are still trying to scam peoples there.
We should be very careful when we need to send our money for get multiple comebacks, most of them are fake.

They target beginners who just enter into the Crypto world, usually beginners are easy to believe when lured in with a Giveaway. The scammers send via email then when someone clicks on the phishing email link, important data will be successfully stolen. I hope beginners to be extra careful about this.

There have been a lot of posts warning people. So if new people are lazy to read and learn about them then I believe they will be fooled. And they need to be fooled in this market 1-2 times then they will gradually recognize and know how to avoid them

[Golftech]

I haven't see any good and real crypto giveaway for sometime, and i think it won't be exist for now.
There are many fake gievaways on youtube, the scammers are still trying to scam peoples there.
We should be very careful when we need to send our money for get multiple comebacks, most of them are fake.

They target beginners who just enter into the Crypto world, usually beginners are easy to believe when lured in with a Giveaway. The scammers send via email then when someone clicks on the phishing email link, important data will be successfully stolen. I hope beginners to be extra careful about this.

That kind of dangers are prone to every beginners, extending your knowledge in order not to easily be penetrated is a good way of securing your important informations. This kind of giveaways really provide luring rewards and if you are not doing your research the chance for you to be attracted is also possible, be diligent to review and analyze don't quickly believe or if much possible stay away from such activities.

[Denreal]

I haven't see any good and real crypto giveaway for sometime, and i think it won't be exist for now.
There are many fake gievaways on youtube, the scammers are still trying to scam peoples there.
We should be very careful when we need to send our money for get multiple comebacks, most of them are fake.

They target beginners who just enter into the Crypto world, usually beginners are easy to believe when lured in with a Giveaway. The scammers send via email then when someone clicks on the phishing email link, important data will be successfully stolen. I hope beginners to be extra careful about this.

That kind of dangers are prone to every beginners, extending your knowledge in order not to easily be penetrated is a good way of securing your important informations. This kind of giveaways really provide luring rewards and if you are not doing your research the chance for you to be attracted is also possible, be diligent to review and analyze don't quickly believe or if much possible stay away from such activities.

When you sometimes advise newbies to learn first, they might feel you are depriving them or advising them against earning early, not knowing that there are steps needed to be taken before earning through whatever means that is available.
There are lots of scams these days, whether on social media platform or on the forum and some are so cunny that you right not be able to decipher properly no matter how knowledgeable you are, particularly if you are not patient enough.
It sometimes baffles me to see some people always thinking that people have free money to throw away without getting something in return. Even if something seems to be given out freely and it is legit, there is a form of benefit the giver will get, let alone someone that is planning to scam.
Newboes should look for ways in which they can be more productive and get paid  for it.

[Fatimahcrypto]

One really need to be very careful in this space. Atimes this scam looks very convincing and without taking a closer look, one could fall to the trap. It takes a great deal of effort to navigate through this space without being ensnared by scammers. The only way out is to avoid being greedy, whatever looks too good to be true, is most likely a trap.

[Serious475]

Cryptocurrency giveaway scams have been a problem for those involved in the crypto-community since the last major bull run in late 2017. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just beginning to get your feet wet in the crypto-space, we encourage all of our customers to educate themselves on current cryptocurrency related scams and how to identify them. In this article, we’ll cover an increasingly common technique used by online scammers — the giveaway scam.



In a nutshell, giveaway scams are a form of social engineering in which a scammer attempts to deceive a cryptocurrency investor into believing that a major cryptocurrency exchange or celebrity is hosting a giveaway. The catch here is that in order to participate in the giveaway, you must first send a certain amount of cryptocurrency to a giveaway address so that you can verify your wallet address and receive your share of the giveaway. However, because cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible, once a victim sends money to the scammer’s address, there is nothing anyone can do to get it back and the scammer has made a profit.


Now that you understand the gist of what giveaway scams are all about, we’d like to make it extremely clear that Coinbase does not engage in cryptocurrency giveaways of any kind, however you can earn cryptocurrency by learning about them through Coinbase Earn. With that said, let’s move on to some recent trends.
Recent Giveaway Scam Trends

To help you recognize the signs of a giveaway scam, we’ve provided you with some examples of the most common giveaway scam trends being used to target cryptocurrency investors.

Coinbase Twitter Impersonations

In the screenshot below, we have a Twitter account impersonating Coinbase and replying to a legitimate Coinbase tweet with an image promoting a 5,000 BTC giveaway scam.



Twitter account impersonating Coinbase and responding to a legitimate Coinbase tweet with giveaway scam link.
The link in this image directs to a web page which would ask you to verify your Bitcoin address by sending anywhere from 0.1 to 10 BTC to the scammer’s giveaway address. According to the scammer’s web page, you would get x10 your payment back. This all sounds very good, but it is 100% a scam and you will receive 0 BTC back!




Celebrity Twitter Impersonations

In this example, we have a very normal looking Twitter account replying to a tweet made by Senator Bernie Sanders. The response here is thanking Elon Musk and sharing an image that appears to be a tweet from Elon Musk about a Bitcoin and Ethereum giveaway being hosted by Tesla. In actuality, this image was manipulated to appear like Elon Musk made this tweet and is purely manufactured by a scammer.



Fake Twitter account replying to a popular post with manipulated Elon Musk tweet.
Navigating to the link in the scammer’s image lands us on a web page that appears to be a Medium blog post. Within the post there are two “official” links leading to “free” Bitcoin and Ethereum. Both of these links lead to scam giveaway addresses that are not to be trusted no matter how great and well designed the web page looks.





Web page created to look like an original Medium blog post with links to giveaway scam.



Tesla giveaway scam page with scammer’s payment address.



YouTube Live Streams


This is a fairly new technique that scammers have been using to perpetuate their cryptocurrency giveaway scams. In this example, the scammer will create a YouTube video using older video streams of cryptocurrency exchange CEOs and overlay the video with some details about an alleged giveaway. They will also set up the video as a live stream so that it appears to be something that is happening NOW, further enticing viewers to participate in the giveaway immediately. In the video description, there is often an “official” giveaway address or a link to a web page containing the giveaway address. Additionally, the scammer will drive fake viewers to the video to make it seem like they have thousands of viewers at that very moment. Don’t fall for this scam, it’s a trap and you will not receive any free BTC!


YouTube account impersonating Coinbase and live streaming a dated ask me anything (AMA) video with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.



Giveaway Scam Email


In our final example, we have an attempt to promote a giveaway scam via email. In the email, the scammer is attempting to convince the recipient that Coinbase is hosting a giveaway to celebrate a user sign up milestone. As previously mentioned, Coinbase does not partake in any cryptocurrency giveaways. Therefore, this is a scam!


Giveaway scam lure sent via email.



Protecting your investment and fellow investors
Now that you’ve learned about the latest techniques being used by giveaway scammers, there are two simple rules that we’d like you to remember that should help you avoid scams like these in the future:
If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
Think twice before sending your funds. All cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible and you will not be able to get your money back.
Lastly, if you encounter any giveaway scams like the ones shown above, please take a moment to protect the broader cryptocurrency community by reporting the scam to Coinbase or directly to Twitter, YouTube, or Google. For your reference, we’ve provided information on reporting to each entity below.

Yes I think that this is great because people now are having cryptocurrency and the dont know how to manage that so they are easily swayed by this types of scan that can endager them. I think that this post is great because it will show beginners what is the right and wrong and you can now identify what is the scam and what type of scheme are they using to make this types of scam. As a beginner this knowledge is useful because it can prevent me and other beginners to trust everything here in this forum because not everything here can be trustworthy and some might only try to hack you or scamming you.

[ReliabilityAlert222]

I agree with you and declare that by boycotting them we have to risk our own wealth free of our own. Thanks

[nadia001]

Firstly I never ever clicked these type of links. When I see them, the first thing I do is, I go to official channel and search if there are such event they posted or so. Btw thanks for this post.

[ashmodeus]

I dunno why people still get that shitty bait,i mean that a old tricks,by a fake twitter account, just their go to official web and see, if there have a description about some giveaway,that must be real, if not, its totally fake.
Dont u say u too lazy to check it and prefer to do what they say on twitter or even youtube.

[Crypto_lion]

I stopped participating in bounties and airdrop which requires KYC for token distribution. Kyc for projects and exchanges is one thing but if you provide them to airdrop you are more likely to see them in dark web.