Alleged Phishing Attempt

[Abu-Naim]

However, I am unhappy because it looks like these exchanges may be selling customers' data to third parties. Do they really do that? If they don't, how do these hackers know that I have a Coinbase account?

Hackers can do anything to deceive people, but if this is the case, they must have contacts with certain Coinbase employees. This is the result of centralized exchanges because there is no guarantee that your privacy is secure with them, which is why keeping our cash with them is quite dangerous. It is preferable to exclusively trade with them and have our coins sent to our wallets.

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[Faisal2202]

I just received an email from Coinbase telling me that they noticed some unusual activity on my account and it has been locked.  It went on to ask that I click on a link to pass a security check before my account is unlocked. I knew this was a phishing attempt and I didn't take any action. However, I am unhappy because it looks like these exchanges may be selling customers' data to third parties. Do they really do that? If they don't, how do these hackers know that I have a Coinbase account?

If you are newbie and you get this sort of message, do not click the link or attempt to input any personal details. This is also a reminder that if you have your bitcoins on any exchange, it is not yours. Never forget, not your keys, not your bitcoins. Get your bitcoins off exchanges.

Sometimes they do not really know you have an account on Coinbase they just send these mails to every email account they have. Now the question is how did they get to know which email has coinbase accounts? We as airdrop hunters always fall prey to scams or such information collector platforms in the FOMO of new big airdrops which might give us hundreds or thousands of dollars. And in those airdrops, they ask such confusing questions and somehow they come to know that you do have an account on Coinbase and you logged in using this email.

Other than this, you might have downloaded some bloatware that might be leaking your information or you must have connected your email on which you made Coinbase to some phishing website to collect something or to get some service for free. For example, you wanted to use some services but the website is asking to contest your email and authorize them some permissions and if you do read in that permission we allow them to read our mails too. So, it also becomes pretty easy for them.

Another thing is Parent and child mode. For example, sometimes If you are using a alternative or spare email for such purposes but you have logged in that email in the same device then they could also at least get to know about it even the cookies and cache of some website could leak that information.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

@Op, between 2021 till early this year, there was one trending bank scam popularly used by scammers to dupe bank customers in my country, and what these scammers do is collect people's phone numbers randomly, after which they (those scammers) will begin to call those individuals they collected their numbers and pretend to be a bank manager from a particular bank. They will inform you that there is something wrong with your account and you need to do an upgrade with your debit card, and if the person is a customer of the bank they mentioned, you will just agree with them and give out your details to them, and they will deduct all the money from your account if you don't act fast.

So, my point here is that Coinbase doesn't just give out their customers details unnecessarily; unless if there is an issue that leads to an investigation, they might be forced to release your details, or if the exchange gets compromised, hackers can be able to steal customers details. Apart from that, those scammers can just collect thousands of emails randomly through some process that they use to get individuals emails, and they can just start sending those emails randomly without even knowing whether all those emails are registered with Coinbase, so if by chance you are unaware of this scamming method and you are also a customer of Coinbase, you can quickly click on those phishing links and get compromised.

My warning is just that anyone who receives such emails should visit their account first and make sure that everything is either alright or compromised, like the email said.

[knowngunman]

Sometimes they do not really know you have an account on Coinbase they just send these mails to every email account they have. Now the question is how did they get to know which email has coinbase accounts?

They don't care to know which email has account with Coinbase or whatever but since the mail is been sent to randomly generated email, if you happen to have an account with the company they impersonated you won't be comfortable but you can just ignore if you don't have an account with them. I do receive numerous mail from project or company I have never interacted with in anyway as well but I ignore without even read some to end.

Some of this exchanges also send too much mails on a daily basis which is uncalled for. This is the reason one may contemplate as to whether the mail is from them or from scammers. Mail are supposed to be sent on important announcement that has to do with customers security and not during every token listing or such flimsy events. Such announcement should be made in their website and not by sending mails. It will definitely reduce the chances of this scammers being successful with their mail trick.

[nakamura12]

They send bulk email to anyone that they cound send it to in order to lure people. I actually received similar email where I have an account as they say when I didn't even know the site they said and also received same email and this time the name used is the same as the platform I have used before though I am not using it anymore. It is more likely a phishing attempt if you received an email like locked account, suspicious activity that you are sure you didn't do any of it.

[sokani]

I just received an email from Coinbase telling me that they noticed some unusual activity on my account and it has been locked.  It went on to ask that I click on a link to pass a security check before my account is unlocked. I knew this was a phishing attempt and I didn't take any action. However, I am unhappy because it looks like these exchanges may be selling customers' data to third parties. Do they really do that? If they don't, how do these hackers know that I have a Coinbase account?

If you are newbie and you get this sort of message, do not click the link or attempt to input any personal details. This is also a reminder that if you have your bitcoins on any exchange, it is not yours. Never forget, not your keys, not your bitcoins. Get your bitcoins off exchanges.

Thanks for sharing this as some persons might receive similar messages and ignorantly click the phishing link and have their accounts comprised. Storing crypto assets in exchanges is not advisable and I don't think the scammer got hold of your email address by chance. These are the possible ways the scammer might have gotten hold of your email address; maybe your email is among piles of emails that must have been sold by a third party agent contracted by Coinbase, maybe you use it to participate in airdrops or you must posted it on the Coinbase telegram group or Twitter page.

[Potato Chips]

This was my initial suspicion and glad that someone else has confirmed it. Definitely going to take your advice... henceforth I'm going to be using a single email across all board for crypto related stuff. It will enable me pin down any where a suspected attack is emanating from.

and if you wanna up your game further, look into email forwarders, they let you create unlimited alias email addresses that are also easy to disable. In short you could create 1 alias per service easily. Some providers to look into are Anonaddy or Simplelogin.

There are also disposable email providers like mail.tm which is perfect if you just wanna test a website.

For publicly-known data breaches, there are websites that tells you if your email has been involved in one. On top of my head are haveibeenpwned.com and monitor.firefox.com

[Peanutswar]

If you subscribe with Coinbase or another exchange, they keep always a notification but the alert regarding with the account's suspicious activity is quite rare issue, if that happens in my case, I will not open the email instead, I will use another device to verify if my account has a suspicious activity anything now are prone with this hackers one mistake can get all of the information you have. We know that the coinbase before have an issue with the data breach so possible that your data is already exposed. If possible change all the related accounts on it to have another layer of security to prevent further damage on your side.

[Queentoshi]

If they don't, how do these hackers know that I have a Coinbase account?

Maybe they don't know at all, they just are sending out mass phishing emails hoping that a percentage of recipients will fall for their trap.

Coinbase is a popular cryptocurrency exchange. On the list for most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase is the second next to Binance. Others that can be found after Coinbase are Kraken, bybit, kucoin etc. Due to the high position occupied by Coinbase on the scale of popularity, there is usually a very high chance that every person with cryptocurrency has an account with Coinbase, so it makes sense that they are sending mass phishing emails in that format to get their victims. If they do it for Coinbase, there will also be other mass phishing mails prepared for other top exchanges on the list also.

[Findingnemo]

If they don't, how do these hackers know that I have a Coinbase account?

Maybe they don't know at all, they just are sending out mass phishing emails hoping that a percentage of recipients will fall for their trap.

Coinbase is a popular cryptocurrency exchange. On the list for most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase is the second next to Binance. Others that can be found after Coinbase are Kraken, bybit, kucoin etc. Due to the high position occupied by Coinbase on the scale of popularity, there is usually a very high chance that every person with cryptocurrency has an account with Coinbase, so it makes sense that they are sending mass phishing emails in that format to get their victims. If they do it for Coinbase, there will also be other mass phishing mails prepared for other top exchanges on the list also.

So it makes my statement valid, user who used the email for cryptocurrency services like news subscriptions, airdrop, or maybe used on another exchange which means the data is exposed in one or another way.

And this website called have i been pwned? will help you to find if your email has been caught in any of the data breaches.

[hd49728]

And this website called have i been pwned? will help you to find if your email has been caught in any of the data breaches.

There is a guide topic about that site.
How to know if your email address was part of any data breach.

Data breach can occur anytime, from any platform so I won't use one email for everything. I decentralize my email addresses to different use cases and I do this to decentralize risk to lose all if I use only one email address and it is compromised.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Depends. You cant accuse them right away that they are the one who gave your documents. But indeed they can do that since they have it. So much better to use dummy emails in doing or connecting to exchanges since its really a good way to protect yourself from scam or attempt like that. But are you sure you didnt go to some links and send your email or join airdrops thats why a hacker spill an email and used that for their attempt?

Cause if you think about it. Why coinbase gave or sell oyur identity to scammers? Thats a shame if they did.

[Agbe]

They may or may not be selling your information, but always remember that hackers/scammers can get your email elsewhere. Heck, I frequently receive Coinbase-related phising email even though I don't even have a Coinbase account.

Exactly, and more so, I don't think coinbase sold out Op information to any third party but probably the scammer sent a random email to people and the Op was among. Op should just ignore the email and to be at the safe side, op should remove any amount of coins from the exchange platform to avoid untold story. As the op said in his last paragraph, that is how.