Biggest Bitcoin giveaway scams and how can you avoid them

[maxreish]

And most of those hackers are using popular accounts so those users will believe that such personality is sincere enough for returns and rewards.

Just always remember that there is no easy high returns, huge rewards. And never ever believe that giving out crypto will have gauranteed you that they will give it back with high interests. Theres no such thing like that.
Unless you gamble with 50/50 chance with your btc.

Whenever i see some posts like this, i always click the report button so they will be some alert to the social media teams that someone is trying to scam people.

[davis196]

This is old news.Why do we have to discuss this again.
Those Youtube scams are so stupid I can't imagine what kind of people are actually sending their Bitcoins to such obviously fake "giveaways".
If somebody is "giving away" lots of Bitcoin,but wants you to send him a small amount of BTC before that,that's an obvious scam.
Youtube and Twitter are sued for this scam,but I think that it's not their fault.Such big companies can't solve the problem of having thousands of hacked accounts in a few days.

[pakhitheboss]

All these scams are only showing how incompetent these companies are in stopping hacks and scams especially Youtube and twitter. I have been seeing a lot of these scams still active and every day a new one pops up. Either they cannot control their own system or these are all insider jobs.

It is always better to avoid such Giveaways or Airdrops on these platforms.

[shoreno]

All these scams are only showing how incompetent these companies are in stopping hacks and scams especially Youtube and twitter. I have been seeing a lot of these scams still active and every day a new one pops up. Either they cannot control their own system or these are all insider jobs.

dont blame the platform yet because i believe they do also   care . i know youtube is strict and its also asociated with google so they dont want to allow such things that will make thier company look bad but to twitter , they can be less strict but they already released a statement regarding on the hackings happened . we can assume that they were now tightening   thier system .  

It is always better to avoid such Giveaways or Airdrops on these platforms.

for now yes thats recomended until both platforms are totally cleaned out and upgraded on their latest security  . theyl soon announce if its already safe for us  to participate on such form of crypto giveaways

[Yogee]

What to do if you come across a Bitcoin scam?

If you come across a Bitcoin scam, you should report it to Bitcoinabuse and Scam Alert first so the sites can be taken down.
Afterwards, you should report the video and channel to Youtube as fraudulent activity or report the tweet and questionable account to Twitter.

It is vital to report the site to Bitcoinabuse and Scam Alert first because if you report the video or tweet to their respective companies,
they will be taken down but the website will still be live.

What I'm familiar with is reporting the domain directly to where it was registered like namecheap for the site to be taken down. I may have heard about scamalert before but this is my first time hearing about Bitcoinabuse so I had to search for it. I think it's a very important part of the post and the link should have been provided too.
- Bitcoinabuse https://www.bitcoinabuse.com/
- ScamAlert https://www.scamalert.sg/

Can you recover a scammed Bitcoin?

Unfortunately, crypto transactions are irreversible as per the blockchain. Once you send funds to a scammer’s address,
there is nothing you can do to get it back. That’s why it’s important to educate yourself about these crypto scams since once you’re pulled into them, there is no insurance and you will not be able to get your money back.

Confirmed bitcoin transactions are irreversible, that is correct. I would to add that if anyone happen to send btc to these scammers, don't attempt to recover them by hiring bitcoin recovery fraud services. It's guaranteed that you will only lose your money again. Please read this topic I've written before https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265067.msg54885257#msg54885257

[AniviaBtc]

Always be aware of these schemes that can make you lose your money.

FAKE GIVEAWAYS are really suspicious and very obvious so expect that it will only fool and disappoint you. There are a lot of newbies who fall for that schemes that's why it is important for that to become the topic in this forum. Don't send money if you think that the thing that you are accessing feels sketchy or doubtful.

Value your asset above all and don't let it become wasted or suddenly disappear with just one wrong mistakes.

[thesmallgod]

The day that twitter hacks happened, I knew it was a scam. If anyone wants to do a giveaway, they will never tell you to send bitcoin, not to talk of highly influential people. Imagine Barack Obama telling you to send money before he can help you. This is really very dumb because even before now, many of those influential people that posted the giveaway have not openly mentioned their support for the bitcoin in the past

[Peanutswar]

This is not new I see a lot of free giveaway with the platform youtube and the only tag you will use is

Live and Giveaway then add the coin you want to search like
"bitcoin giveaway live"
"Ethereum giveaway live"

Also, there are a lot of reports right there on our beginners and help and scams accusations.

How to identify if this is a scam.

Most of them are having a

Deposit to join this event
Secured
Can double or triple your money

It's better if we keep reporting on this kind of platform to make more awareness. It's not too hard today if to find out because it's too much suspicious all of the statement they are giving on the banner.

[LogitechMouse]

If you are in the crypto space for quite some time already, you probably seen different kinds of scams.
This is just one of the very common but effective way scammers are using to lure some newbie investors.

I've seen many ads in Youtube regarding BTC, XRP and ETH giveaways (like doubler thingy). The recent twitter hack just to scam newbies are very obvious too. Its just that investors are ignorant and they get fall easily to these kind of scams. Well like I always said, investors will not learn if they will not experience it so... let them experience it first in order for them to adjust .

[TedMosby]

remember when ads related to bitcoin or crypto was banned by Google and Facebook?
now they promote the actual scams. they surely need to hire more ads and social media evaluators.
I saw ETH giveaways ads on youtube regularly. sigh.

[milani]

Just a simple step don't send out money or Bitcoin if it is a giveaway then why would you need to send first before receiving it?
That is the only thing that you should never forget on crypto or in every currency.
Just ask yourself why would you even need to pay in order to receive a free giveaways?

 Completely agree, that even the first word that everyone should notice - it is giveaway, that means there will not be collecting from people. And of course everyone should make the analysis about the amounts, how real they are, just simple calculations and the reality before making some steps under emotions. Of course I would add it is better to find real pages of those real people whose profiles are used for such things. And even sometimes it is so hard to understand at first glance that it is fake account. So it is like a variant to ask about this giveaway on forums where you will find answers exactly.

[Zionatin]

Pretty much if you ever see someone iconic claiming to offer you some sort of way to win or invest then stay away. I have even seen scams claiming my president endorses a certain bitcoin scam. It's crazy... These guys have absolutely no shame at all. Trever Noah was also used and the scammers said he was investing. This "bitcoin revolution" scam is still going on. Magical ways to bank that will make you rich. So much crap. Even Instagram is showing these ads.

All they need to do is prove the giveaway address actually exists by signing the wallet with the BTC in. So if I give away 10btc I send the 10btc to a new wallet and I sign that new wallet for the giveaway. That is what I love about crypto. You cannot lie about this sort of thing.

[junnar1968]

There are plenty of scams out there, and the first thing you can do to avoid it is by being aware. Research and learn to detect red flags in deals or giveaways. From blackmails, fake exchanges, phishing emails and free giveaways to pyramid schemes and malware, there are plenty of scams out there.
 
To protect yourself, learning about previous Bitcoin hacking and scamming incidents is good essential knowledge to have. This will help you know how scammers were able to breach security protocols, and how you’ll be able to protect your funds.

[Asuspawer09]

Pretty much scams are everywhere in a lot of social media platforms like twitter, telegram, Facebook, etc. since they could just make an account easily and encourage some people to invest.

Hack account is really convincing since you could see the blue check in the twitter account and you know its a legitimate account, but I think the lesson here is just don't send any amount of funds when doing giveaways.

remember when ads related to bitcoin or crypto was banned by Google and Facebook?
now they promote the actual scams. they surely need to hire more ads and social media evaluators.
I saw ETH giveaways ads on youtube regularly. sigh.

Every ads are paid so they are not really filtered, for google its just all about money when it comes to ads. I think when you don't have a lot of knowledge clicking ads is not new or always a thing.

You could easily make ads as long as you paid google, just picked some keyword and google is going to display your ads. Still, I guess you just need to know how scams works I guess I never get scam again after I know how scams work online.

[Twentyonepaylots]

Every ads are paid so they are not really filtered, for google its just all about money when it comes to ads. I think when you don't have a lot of knowledge clicking ads is not new or always a thing.

It could be filtered but what google is doing is that they rely to their AI in accepting promotions, in that way they cannot reject one's offer if they paid the whole price for the ads. If they could done it manually, they could have been more strict about these stuff but that will generate a lot of work from them, besides technology does everything now isn't it?

You could easily make ads as long as you paid google, just picked some keyword and google is going to display your ads. Still, I guess you just need to know how scams works I guess I never get scam again after I know how scams work online.

This is why some scams are being advertised in google, no wonder there are people who thinks that some promotions from google is legit and so they are buying into it. Too sad for those who can't distinguish legit from a scam project.

[Yatsan]

Actually scam schemes are now easy to be known for those are really old school and very obvious in nature and those who will get caught into such fraudulent actions must be just new into this industry for they are still not familiar of obvious scam schemes such as fake giveaways being announced at social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Telegram. At first glance, you must come into thinking that why would you bother to send a decent amount into a specific given address if that is intended to do giveaways at the first place? It should have asked you for a task to be qualified for the event and not a payment to claim such rewards.

It would be just short and simple. No shortcut and simple way of doubling and obtaining Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies but hardwork coming from your own effort. Do not rely on such things like giveaways for it is almost impossible for like that to exist and they will surely be targeting the new ones so everyone must be aware and informed to determine obvious scams to be able not to get fooled and be victimized. Keep yourself updated and knowledgeable about how things work in this industry and it could save you from potential risk of being scammed.

[Asuspawer09]

Every ads are paid so they are not really filtered, for google its just all about money when it comes to ads. I think when you don't have a lot of knowledge clicking ads is not new or always a thing.

It could be filtered but what google is doing is that they rely to their AI in accepting promotions, in that way they cannot reject one's offer if they paid the whole price for the ads. If they could done it manually, they could have been more strict about these stuff but that will generate a lot of work from them, besides technology does everything now isn't it?

For me, google is not really trying and AI are already set in that way, maybe it is going to generate a lot of work to them and if you think about it your not really going to paid to fix a problem that is giving you a profit.

A lot of ads are obviously a scam or just illegal things that even AI should be able to detect but maybe as long as it is paid it should still be good to go no matter what. This is just how advertisement works in every platform, I guess there are some exceptions by the majority are like this.

Actually scam schemes are now easy to be known for those are really old school and very obvious in nature and those who will get caught into such fraudulent actions must be just new into this industry for they are still not familiar of obvious scam schemes such as fake giveaways being announced at social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Telegram. At first glance, you must come into thinking that why would you bother to send a decent amount into a specific given address if that is intended to do giveaways at the first place? It should have asked you for a task to be qualified for the event and not a payment to claim such rewards.

It would be just short and simple. No shortcut and simple way of doubling and obtaining Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies but hardwork coming from your own effort. Do not rely on such things like giveaways for it is almost impossible for like that to exist and they will surely be targeting the new ones so everyone must be aware and informed to determine obvious scams to be able not to get fooled and be victimized. Keep yourself updated and knowledgeable about how things work in this industry and it could save you from potential risk of being scammed.

Never stop learning, be knowledgeable about how things work or scams works, since there are so many users in the forum that is sharing their experience on how they get scam by some random guy, we should have an idea about what is their method in scamming, etc. A lot of giveaways in the past year are a bit profitable but its kinda change already and mostly are just data gathering to get information from the community.

[kryptqnick]

Recent Bitcoin giveaway scams
While giveaway scams are not new to the Bitcoin community, this kind of targeted modus using social media has been going on as early as
February 2020. From Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos and now Vitalik Buterin, these scam videos change their “main face” every few months to attract
unsuspecting victims.

People often mock the victims and say that they don't understand how they fell for it, but I believe that a broad anti-scam educational campaign is needed. There should be some social ads and warnings about the sorts of scam that is common online. It's also important to point out there that real accounts can be hacked, fake accounts might look quite real and official-looking emails might be faked as well.

Youtube Bitcoin video scams


 
It’s almost a given that it’s a giveaway scam video if a clip of a famous personality
giving a speech with the words 'BTC Giveaway' is plastered all over the screen.

As for Youtube, I think their big mistake is that they fail to take down the videos fast enough. Scamming live steams and videos are often available for at least a couple of days before Youtube takes them down, even if people report the video. Meanwhile, sometimes their algorithms block videos from relatively normal crypto vloggers (at least, not outright scammers). They have to work on improving the system.

[Oceat]

This is the problem why newbies get scammed easily because they don't know anything yet.
Just remember this line "if it's too good to be true, then it's prolly a scam".
And also, there are no free in this world–it is either you pay or work for that something to get it.
Always do your own research, it will be very helpful in the future.

[Kez1817]

People will not fall in any scam activities even scammers use a popular personality if they are not greedy and they think wisely. Only those with the desire to earn big instantly usually fall on this kind of scam strategy. Also before joining their scam giveaways people should do some research first to find out if it is real or not.