Be careful with your identity documents and KYC

[_act_]

I was reading this, that bitcoin and other crypto were banned in India in 2018. The ban was lifted, but later 30% crypto tax was imposed on crypto users and this led to Indians preferring to exchange crypto and rupee within themselves which can be on decentralized exchanges or centralized exchanges.

How the P2P scams happen

One way P2P scammers steal user data is with the help of fake crypto-centered channels on Telegram that promise high profits or airdrops. Many gullible users looking to make a quick profit often join these channels and share their personal banking information. In many other cases, the scammer simply buys or steals the user’s personal information.

The stolen data is then used to create a P2P account on any popular P2P platform — Binance and WazriX are common in India.

The scammer then initiates a buy order on the P2P platform looking for unsuspecting sellers. Once they match with a seller, they send the money to the seller using the victim’s account. Thus, they complete the P2P transaction on the platfrom where the buyer receives the cryptocurrency and the seller receives the money in their bank account.

The buyer (scammer) then vanishes with the crypto and the victim whose bank account was used to send the money only realizes it after the money has been deducted from their bank account.

The scammers will have the information to bank details and other necessary personal documents of the victim through fake airdrops and others means to lure the victims to provide their personal data. They will use the victims documents and necessary bank details to register on a centralized exchange. Create a centralized exchange P2P buy order, using the victims money that he has in bank to pay and receive crypto in return. And the scammer will transfer the coins out of the exchange.

You can read about this in complete from https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-p2p-scams-india

Avoid giving out your personal documents and personal data because it can be used to steal all your money.

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[Coyster]

Make sure that you release money from escrow only when the money has been seen in your bank account if you are the seller. If you are the buyer, make sure you report the seller after you you have sent money if he does not want to release the coin from escrow.

The case in your OP is different from the usual seller refusing to release funds from escrow or buyer not actually sending funds but marked the order as paid, etc. The source in your OP is talking about identity theft, scammers are buying and stealing people's banking details and using it to carry out peer to peer trades, i don't really know how much info you'd have to give away for a scammer to be able to send money out of your bank account without you knowing, (but i guess it has to be so much).

Thus the warning has to be that users should protect their personal details, don't post it anywhere or inadvertently send it to scammers when looking for cheap buck. Once the scammer makes this anauthorized payment and receive the coins, there is no way to retrieve it or trace them because it was your details that was used for the registration process.

[_act_]

The case in your OP is different from the usual seller refusing to release funds from escrow or buyer not actually sending funds but marked the order as paid, etc.

Thank you for telling me this. I have edited the OP to make it perfect for people to understand. The people that submit their KYC documents to scammers unknowingly are the victims which are not even involved in the transaction between buyer and seller, but because their bank account details was known to the scammers, it was used to make transaction from the victims bank account.

I see this as a way not to steal directly from the victims bank account, but instead, they use it to buy crypto from a centralized exchange.

[hatshepsut93]

How the P2P scams happen

One way P2P scammers steal user data is with the help of fake crypto-centered channels on Telegram that promise high profits or airdrops. Many gullible users looking to make a quick profit often join these channels and share their personal banking information. In many other cases, the scammer simply buys or steals the user’s personal information.

The stolen data is then used to create a P2P account on any popular P2P platform — Binance and WazriX are common in India.

The scammer then initiates a buy order on the P2P platform looking for unsuspecting sellers. Once they match with a seller, they send the money to the seller using the victim’s account. Thus, they complete the P2P transaction on the platfrom where the buyer receives the cryptocurrency and the seller receives the money in their bank account.

The buyer (scammer) then vanishes with the crypto and the victim whose bank account was used to send the money only realizes it after the money has been deducted from their bank account.

Those banks must have really horrible security, because I can't imagine this happening to me even if my government id got leaked to scammers. My banks use fingerprints, face id, phonecalls, email, in-app chat for extra verificiation, and they have risk assesment algorithms. When I make typical transactions, they can processed in an instant, but if something is off, they would do extra verifications to make sure it's really me doing the transaction.

People should vote with their wallets and use modern digital banks with secure infrastructure.

[Adbitco]

From your explanation something seems to be unclear here.. Now let say; normally when people got involved in airdrops campaign and possible they could asked for kyc to get verified on their platform or website as the case seems to be.

Now how do they uses to verify their exchange account such as Binance main while before your identity could be used for verification on Binance p2p trade it should be that your bank name and your kyc details tally correctly before you could execute trade on binance, this same thing applicable to the buyer and the seller and if both details aren't complete Binace wouldn't allow such trade.  At this point where and how taking account number will lead to scam each other?

Even though someone's account is being used Binance must request for kyc name to correspond with the account number and if that doesn't work there will be no trade, although I don't know if Binance changes the policy already.
What we must be very careful of is our Documents they can easily used them to pass kyc in some exchange. The only scam that is common with p2p is for seller to mark paid while they haven't paid and when funds are being released to them and you didn't receive alert this shows such person has been scammed.

[_act_]

Now how do they uses to verify their exchange account such as Binance main while before your identity could be used for verification on Binance p2p trade it should be that your bank name and your kyc details tally correctly before you could execute trade on binance, this same thing applicable to the buyer and the seller and if both details aren't complete Binace wouldn't allow such trade.  At this point where and how taking account number will lead to scam each other?

You know the extent scammers can go. It is possible that some people are impersonated among the victims and asked to give them details that can be used to steal money from their bank so that they can receive their high yield investment profit. In my country, this scam is very common in a way that scammer can steal your money from the bank which is through impersonation and if you give them what they requested for, your money in your bank account would be stolen. But some people carry it to the next level of using crypto instead of doing the scam directly.

[Upgrade00]

Avoid giving out your personal documents and personal data because it can be used to steal all your money.

Avoid giving out personal information cause it can be used in a thousand and one ways against you and once that information is public you can never regain privacy.
You should consider any email address, password, name age and personal details you've submitted to any website to be compromised cause there is a huge black market for such information.

Do not rely on your Banks to do extra checks or on the exchange to be more careful with who the allow to register an account.

[Adbitco]

Now how do they uses to verify their exchange account such as Binance main while before your identity could be used for verification on Binance p2p trade it should be that your bank name and your kyc details tally correctly before you could execute trade on binance, this same thing applicable to the buyer and the seller and if both details aren't complete Binace wouldn't allow such trade.  At this point where and how taking account number will lead to scam each other?

You know the extent scammers can go. It is possible that some people are impersonated among the victims and asked to give them details that can be used to steal money from their bank so that they can receive their high yield investment profit. In my country, this scam is very common in a way that scammer can steal your money from the bank which is through impersonation and if you give them what they requested for, your money in your bank account would be stolen. But some people carry it to the next level of using crypto instead of doing the scam directly.

Okay now I got it clearly..
Is also common over here but people are aware of it so when such wants to happen or when they received a fake call from scamming trying to impersonate a banker and staff from any of their branch people easily detects because already they have warned people that bankers and staff would never call you in asking of their banking credentials or valuable information that could lead to extortion of anyone's fund.

When they noticed that people had discovered their ways of tricking customers through bank customer care service, they limited their operation through banks maybe who knows what they may devised now as a scamming tools.

[The Cryptovator]

I'm curious about how one could create a Binance account using fraudulent documents when they have a live face verification process. Other platforms might only ask for bank statements and government-issued ID cards. If that's the case, those platforms should consider modifying their verification methods. However, we must remain cautious and avoid falling for the idea of easy money through Airdrops. Sharing documents for a small amount of money can be risky and potentially lead to scams.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

This kind of scam is not common in my place, and I am even wondering how possible it is for someone to be able to carry out transactions with your bank account without having all of your details, which include transaction pin or token number, bank verification number, and in some cases, before you can authorise a person's bank account, you will also be asked to provide their correct date of birth. Only if you have such complete details can you hack into a person's bank account. Someone can easily or freely give out their bank account number and their full name, but with that, your account cannot be hacked without your notice because the bank will definitely send you a verification message.

Anyway, crypto enthusiasts just have to be careful when handling their crypto assets and make security paramount.

[BlackBoss_]

Why KYC is extremely dangerous and useless

If you KYC, you lose your identity documents and can not get them back. You never know how those documents will be handled by that exchange and maybe they hire another third party company to do KYC verification. It is double risk if you fall into that process as your identity documents can be leaked by that exchange or by the third party company.

[Faisal2202]

A great and gentle reminder. This issue is not only faced by Indians as many other airdrops hunters or I should say people who fell for FOMO faced this scams. And some even do not aware of the crypto fully they have no idea about BTC blockchain and how things work. Most of them still think if we invest in BTC we will be rich over night and some think it is scam. People having no knowledge are tagging BTC and Blockchain like they know everything about it.

Even, I have tried a lot of people near me to avoid giving there information out for small money and the worst thing is people to earn money in world coin (idk if i write the correct name but its the token of OpenAI) what they are doing to earn Word coin is scanning there eye fingerprints in exchange of money and there face recognition. Means they are giving up on all of there information just for a small amount of money,

[o_e_l_e_o]

i don't really know how much info you'd have to give away for a scammer to be able to send money out of your bank account without you knowing, (but i guess it has to be so much).

The average amount of KYC information you have to hand over to a centralized exchange is more than enough for an attacker to commit identity theft and gain access to your fiat accounts. And given that every major exchange has suffered, and continues to suffer, data hacks/leaks/breaches or even just outright sells your data, then anyone who has completed KYC is at risk.

I'm curious about how one could create a Binance account using fraudulent documents when they have a live face verification process.

Plenty of software out there, even free software, which can change your face in real time: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-05-11/realtime-ai-deepfakes-how-to-protect-yourself

[Sim_card]

Now how do they uses to verify their exchange account such as Binance main while before your identity could be used for verification on Binance p2p trade it should be that your bank name and your kyc details tally correctly before you could execute trade on binance, this same thing applicable to the buyer and the seller and if both details aren't complete Binace wouldn't allow such trade.  At this point where and how taking account number will lead to scam each other?

You know the extent scammers can go. It is possible that some people are impersonated among the victims and asked to give them details that can be used to steal money from their bank so that they can receive their high yield investment profit. In my country, this scam is very common in a way that scammer can steal your money from the bank which is through impersonation and if you give them what they requested for, your money in your bank account would be stolen. But some people carry it to the next level of using crypto instead of doing the scam directly.

Okay now I got it clearly..
Is also common over here but people are aware of it so when such wants to happen or when they received a fake call from scamming trying to impersonate a banker and staff from any of their branch people easily detects because already they have warned people that bankers and staff would never call you in asking of their banking credentials or valuable information that could lead to extortion of anyone's fund.

When they noticed that people had discovered their ways of tricking customers through bank customer care service, they limited their operation through banks maybe who knows what they may devised now as a scamming tools.

What I have understand is that,for a scammer to have full access to get funds out of your account,the scammer needs to have an OTP code sent to the original owner of the account and if the owner sends the scammer the OTP,that is when he can use your funds to buy crypto. On the other hand,if the scammer can't get the OTP code, it is impossible for the scammer to have access to your funds. Another way is if you gave out your ATM card last four digits to the scammer or you lost your ATM card and the scammer then have access to it. In my country people are so careless that when they loss their phones or misplaced their sim cards,they feel reluctant to go and retrieve it,if a scammer sees the phone or was the one that stole the phone, he goes straight to your message to see if there is any message from your bank and he uses that message to get information to have access into your account and steal your funds. We just need to be very careful on handling our documents or devices that have our information on them not to be exposed to people either on the internet or offline.

[Findingnemo]

Plenty of software out there, even free software, which can change your face in real time: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-05-11/realtime-ai-deepfakes-how-to-protect-yourself

Most of the videos can be detected if we pay attention to the details but who knows how this AI will improve in the future and may create videos more than just realistic.

There is an article regarding this posted a few months back : AI deepfakes are getting better at spoofing KYC verification: Binance exec

This can be controlled if the verification process is manual and done by an actual human or else this thing will get worse for sure.

[Davidvictorson]

Avoid giving out your personal documents and personal data because it can be used to steal all your money.

This is not even possible. The reality of the world in which we live right now is that you must submit your KYC document or service , access will be denied you. Even if there are businesses that may not require KYC, they are like just 1%. Maybe the right recommendation should be to verify  whatever company you are submitting your documents to before you go ahead to do it. Another option is if you cannot entirely avoid them, if will make sense to have a like a "burner-KYC" document that can be submitted when required. Your main assets are safe if there is a breach or something.

[Upgrade00]

This is not even possible. The reality of the world in which we live right now is that you must submit your KYC document or service , access will be denied you. Even if there are businesses that may not require KYC, they are like just 1%.

They are more than 1% and considering the thousands of services available only a handful of them is needed for us to fulfill all the requirements we need.
If you do enough research you will find out alternative services which does not require you to dox yourself

verify  whatever company you are submitting your documents to before you go ahead to do it.

A company can be as reputable as possible but your documents can still be compromised after you submit it to them and you cannot verify the process involved in the handling of the documents after it is submitted.

[Dunamisx]

The scammers will have the information to bank details and other necessary personal documents of the victim through fake airdrops and others means to lure the victims to provide their personal data. They will use the victims documents and necessary bank details to register on a centralized exchange.

I will suggest three quick ways to avoid this kind of scam from those who are ready to make us cry in shedding tears over the loss of our coins.

1. Don't be greedy
2. Don't be too quick in making money
3. Research on any site before making deal with them and don't leave your sensitive informations online.

We need to be careful with the way we handle our personal information which have to be about our privacy, password, seed phrase or any private keys must bot be submitted to any only exchages together with other informations that may lead to tracking us from anywhere, email, wallet address, phone number, contact address and many more information should not be made available to the public as well, we don't know who may use them against us and attack.

[BRINIRHA]

Well whatever it is, we always have to be careful in sharing official documents and our personal data. Including centralized exchanges that are not too trusted. Not just a bunch of scammers from a p2p user or something. But actually there are also exchanges created to deceive their own users. Usually they are very low rated centralized exchanges. I had several withdrawal transactions that didn't even process. I contacted customer service and didn't get a serious response. Even the exchange telegram group was locked so that users could not send chats. In essence we are deadlocked on getting our funds back. Transactions can't even be canceled. So I gave up some of my money there.

And speaking of p2p there are actually buyers or sellers on Binance who don't require us to use a bank account in our own name. You can see them in some of the detailed terms they wrote. And usually I use it. But the majority does require us to use the same account name as the name we used to register on the stock exchange. But fortunately not all of them are like that.

[sunsilk]

Those victims that are giving their bank details and allows these culprits to gain access on it must really be too gullible at all and greedy at the same time.

Honestly, I can't imagine that someone goes to that point but it's a real thing because I've seen several posts in many socials that this happens. Too sad for those type of victims.

They're unsuspecting as well and whilst the banking details have been taken, there should be like a 2FA system from the bank to call the victim's name if unsuspected transaction has been made.