[SCAM] Fake transaction accelerator that requires typing your seed phrase!!!

[SFR10]

What happened:
Earlier in the day, I was googling to see if I could find a new free TX accelerator ^{[in connection with "this thread"]} and it didn't take long before I landed on a fake one that was asking for our seed phrase while using a free GoDaddy website and based on how transaction fees are at the moment, I don't think it'd be the last of its kind ^{[unfotunately]}!

Reference Link:
https://bitcointransactionaccelerator.godaddysites.com ^{[archived version]}

Code:

https://bitcointransactionaccelerator.godaddysites.com

Additional Notes:
Please take a minute to also report it from here: AbuseReport

Update:
Alternative ways to report it:

• abuse contact email ^{[abuse@godaddy.com]}
  

• until then we can try with -> https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/
  

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[logfiles]

Lol, these scammers never rest 

Given the recent spike in Bitcoin Transaction fees, they are probably going to create more of this fake bitcoin transaction accelerators to pounce on unsuspecting newbies.
Reported, I haven't included my email address for follow up, but I hope they act on removing the phishing site soon

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

What happened:
Earlier in the day, I was googling to see if I could find a new free TX accelerator ^{[in connection with "this thread"]} and it didn't take long before I landed on a fake one that was asking for our seed phrase while using a free GoDaddy website and based on how transaction fees are at the moment, I don't think it'd be the last of its kind ^{[unfotunately]}!

They created a fake site and ranked on Google, was it that easy? These guys are master at scamming for sure. But I wonder how many people will give the seed phrase knowing that's the only thing a scammer needs to empty a wallet.

Good catch!

[robelneo]

This is a cheap trick they cannot spend to buy a domain so they use free subdomain marketing from a popular domain registrar, they should have weed out websites that were created from their free marketing service because it's likely going to be abused.
Checking mempool and the transaction fees on my Electrum wallet I was asked to pay $20 for my transaction so scammers are taking this opportunity I'm sure many are looking for a way to accelerate their transactions, especially those with small transactions.

[JollyGood]

The problem for victims is when there is a chance for them to make money, scammers will never cease to amaze. They are opportunistic and they will use anything they can to take advantage of any situation therefore avoiding higher transaction fees will always be something gullible people can fall for.

Unfortunately, the website is still operational, I hope it gets taken down soon.

Lol, these scammers never rest 

Given the recent spike in Bitcoin Transaction fees, they are probably going to create more of this fake bitcoin transaction accelerators to pounce on unsuspecting newbies.

[yhiaali3]

I tried the report but the site takes a long time and gives me an error message:

               
I tried using a vpn but the same result.

In any case, it is expected that the phishers will exploit all circumstances to their advantage, given the current high Bitcoin network fees and the increasing demand for accelerators, it is certain that they will create more of these fraudulent sites.

Unfortunately, despite all these warnings, some beginners still fall victim to this primitive type of fraud and easily give up their private keys.

[Zaguru12]

They created a fake site and ranked on Google, was it that easy? These guys are master at scamming for sure. But I wonder how many people will give the seed phrase knowing that's the only thing a scammer needs to empty a wallet.

Good catch!

Phishing sites, fake ones and even fake apps easily get ranked this days both on google or the play Store I don’t know the criteria that makes it so easy for this scammers to get this stuffs. As for the website might be a reputable site been bought.

I would say many people might have fall victim and many will still fall victim if the site isn’t brought down. If people could easily give away their keys to scammers to help them reverse transactions, then submitting seed phrase to help them accelerate transactions with Lower fees paid at this period will just be same thing.

[TheUltraElite]

With the mempool getting congested such "services" scam or not will propagate more and more in number. This forum is full of vigilant users who help reduce the load of such scams but its not the same with every community out there so I urge everyone to be on the lookout and keep your friends informed and those who are less tech-savvy, safe from such dirty tricks.

The reporting site got timed out on my end too. I will check back later again.

EDIT : Site reported from my end. I have put in an explanation as to how seed phrases can be a used to own the victim's wallet and hope the site gets taken down.

[bakasabo]

What about free transaction accelerators that are presented on this forum or can be found through googling? Do they help or they are like placebo effect, they suppose to fasten transaction, but in general do nothing? Are they fake? Because after they done their work, they sometimes ask for a tip.

[salad daging]

When bitcoin transactions rise, the scammers act by creating fake sites as if this is a free accelerator because of course many people will use this site to speed up their transactions for free, but by asking for seed phrases it is ridiculous, but still the scammers always try to duplicate it.

I have taken the time to report this site so that it can be shut down immediately, so that no more victims are fooled by this kind of classic trick.

[JollyGood]

Well, I have just checked again and can confirm that the website is definitely still operational. If this was Namecheap I am sure they would have blocked the domain within hours. I have no idea why GoDaddy have not clamped down on this after the number of reports that have been made against it but it does not look good on their part.

[tabas]

Nice find.
With all of the high transaction fees that we've got. These scammers will always find a way to pay a visit to their potential victims in every sector on the crypto community. While for us, we can figure this out easily but the newbies are at utmost risk with these scammers that are making it look like they're a legit service and can accelerate transactions through seed phrases.

[Baofeng]

Good catch.

And with the fees really skyrocketing, scammers know how to take advantage of it. If I'm not mistaken, I have seen this kind of attacks in the past and reported it as well. This cyber criminals are obviously not going to take a rest and will continue to take advantage of anything that they can get their hands on.

So very dangerous specially for newbies who's going to fall for this kind of tricks.

[pinggoki]

Lol, these scammers never rest  

Given the recent spike in Bitcoin Transaction fees, they are probably going to create more of this fake bitcoin transaction accelerators to pounce on unsuspecting newbies.
Reported, I haven't included my email address for follow up, but I hope they act on removing the phishing site soon

Think of these scammers as businessmen that sees any events that they witness as an opportunity like how a normal honest and even evil businessmen sees the need to be filled, they want to make sure that if there's a demand for that service that they will be able to capitalize on it and their only difference to a businessmen is that they don't have the skills to do the services and so they lie and cheat for a living. There's going to be a surge in these scams that are like this because like a scum that they are they will always be present. When everyone finally learns to avoid stuff that are too good to be true, maybe we will see these people that don't have a lot of good things to do with their time finally give up scamming people but that part where everyone where they avoid stuff is going to be a hard task and almost an impossible dream. Good catch OP, hope that you have the energy and will to catch more of this because there's more coming with the ever increasing bitcoin transaction fees.

[Husires]

I have seen some people trying to contact the transaction acceleration service provider here, so I do not blame the beginners who may use Google to find these browsers. It is a happy day for the scammers, but it seems that this scammer was very hasty and used the primitive method of all scammers, which is to request the seeds directly.
Report Done

[WhyFhy]

Hopefully these guys aren't actually getting anything from this, it's really not to hard to rebroadcast a TX or CPFP I imagine the people that fall victim to this are fomo users just reacting to information instantly without checking into it a little.

[SFR10]

Reported, I haven't included my email address for follow up, but I hope they act on removing the phishing site soon

EDIT : Site reported from my end. I have put in an explanation as to how seed phrases can be a used to own the victim's wallet and hope the site gets taken down.

I have taken the time to report this site so that it can be shut down immediately, so that no more victims are fooled by this kind of classic trick.

Report Done

I tried the report but the site takes a long time and gives me an error message:

A massive thanks to all of you for your efforts ^{[it means a lot]}

they should have weed out websites that were created from their free marketing service because it's likely going to be abused.

I agree, but I guess they care more about seeing their name appear on the header area of these websites ^[SMH].

What about free transaction accelerators that are presented on this forum or can be found through googling? Do they help or they are like placebo effect, they suppose to fasten transaction, but in general do nothing? Are they fake? Because after they done their work, they sometimes ask for a tip.

Almost all of them are fake accelerators that either rebroadcast transactions or use a free TX accelerator to pretend they can push transactions to a mining pool.

I have no idea why GoDaddy have not clamped down on this after the number of reports that have been made against it but it does not look good on their part.

Probably they didn't fully grasp the importance of our reports, despite some of us providing an in-depth explanation ^{[unfortunately]}.

[coin-investor]

I'm surprised that scammers are quick to launch a sites for what's trending, transaction accelerators are in demand now, and I have this feeling that scammers are using keyword analysis on what's trending on the internet to create phishing sites to scam so if there's a new trend in the internet that is associated to Cryptocurrency expect scammers to create similar sites.
Education is still the key to combating these phishing sites, you cannot become an investor without first learning how to protect yourself and your portfolio, remember we are our own bank and our security is our knowledge.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

What about free transaction accelerators that are presented on this forum or can be found through googling? Do they help or they are like placebo effect, they suppose to fasten transaction, but in general do nothing? Are they fake? Because after they done their work, they sometimes ask for a tip.

The only working form accelerator I found was ViaBTC however their free acceleration has some limitations. When you have a large transaction size you will need to use their paid service but for many the free service is enough.

[JollyGood]

I have no idea why GoDaddy have not clamped down on this after the number of reports that have been made against it but it does not look good on their part.

Probably they didn't fully grasp the importance of our reports, despite some of us providing an in-depth explanation ^{[unfortunately]}.

This is extremely unprofessional behaviour by Godaddy because I just checked again and the website has still not been taken down. If they have a fraud section that takes these complaints seriously they would be taking action. I am sure they have enough tools on hand to ensure the scammer behind the website is not allowed to register under a new name to create another Godaddy account for scamming purposes.

I'm surprised that scammers are quick to launch a sites for what's trending, transaction accelerators are in demand now, and I have this feeling that scammers are using keyword analysis on what's trending on the internet to create phishing sites to scam so if there's a new trend in the internet that is associated to Cryptocurrency expect scammers to create similar sites.

Scammers will always look to make money by researching on what people are discussing online. I am sure there are more of these types of websites out there.

[Lucius]

They created a fake site and ranked on Google, was it that easy? These guys are master at scamming for sure. But I wonder how many people will give the seed phrase knowing that's the only thing a scammer needs to empty a wallet.
Good catch!

I would not agree, it is the work of an amateur who does not know that a seed can have more than 12 words, and also that there is something called a "private key". Some more serious "hacker" would make a little more effort and expand the base of possible users.

Additional Notes:
Please take a minute to also report it from here: AbuseReport

For those who value privacy, this is not an easy task - because they either get an error when loading the page or fall into an endless loop of re-captcha. I will definitely try later and until then we can try with -> https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/

[xLays]

I have no idea why GoDaddy have not clamped down on this after the number of reports that have been made against it but it does not look good on their part.

Probably they didn't fully grasp the importance of our reports, despite some of us providing an in-depth explanation ^{[unfortunately]}.

This is extremely unprofessional behaviour by Godaddy because I just checked again and the website has still not been taken down. If they have a fraud section that takes these complaints seriously they would be taking action. I am sure they have enough tools on hand to ensure the scammer behind the website is not allowed to register under a new name to create another Godaddy account for scamming purposes.

Always remember it takes time; it's not instant. Looking into reports like this and dealing with them can be complicated. It takes time because the platform needs to check the details, find out who's behind it and decide on the best way to handle it. Sometimes they have many reports to go through so it might take a while to get to each case.

[acroman08]

done reporting, a nice find by the way.

got curious and put the web address on the Google search bar to see what else can be found and it looks like someone on Reddit tried to recommend it to someone who is looking for a BTC accelerator. anyway, on the bright side, this thread is among the top search results just below the fake accelerator if you search the web address of the fake accelerator on Google.

[SFR10]

For those who value privacy, this is not an easy task - because they either get an error when loading the page or fall into an endless loop of re-captcha.

You're right... I should've added their abuse contact email ^{[abuse@godaddy.com]} for those who'd like to directly send a report by using a disposable/throwaway email in order to stay under the radar ^{[my bad]}.

I will definitely try later and until then we can try with -> https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/

Thank you, I've added it to the opening post.

done reporting, a nice find by the way.

Thank you

got curious and put the web address on the Google search bar to see what else can be found and it looks like someone on Reddit tried to recommend it to someone who is looking for a BTC accelerator.

Nice catch, that user might be the culprit...

[Lucius]

For those who value privacy, this is not an easy task - because they either get an error when loading the page or fall into an endless loop of re-captcha.

You're right... I should've added their abuse contact email ^{[abuse@godaddy.com]} for those who'd like to directly send a report by using a disposable/throwaway email in order to stay under the radar ^{[my bad]}.
~snip~

I think it's about the fact that on the first link the re-captcha is set to maximum difficulty and I didn't manage to pass it even after 30+ attempts, while Google phishing also has the same captcha which (at least for me) was very easy solvable. However, as I can see, the page is still available, which only means that someone on the other side does not take things like this seriously, or there simply aren't enough people who deal with things like this.

[Sim_card]

Scammers like to take advantage of any crazy scenario that is on ground to scam people of their bitcoin. This is why they are using the high transaction fee problem to see how they can scam people by creating a fake bitcoin transaction accelerator and also reducing the fee to make it catch the attention of newbies and people that are in a rush to get their transactions confirmed, but the seed phrase is where they exposed themselves.
A nice catch OP, i will seize to make any bitcoin transaction for now that we are facing this challenge of high fee, because prevention is better than been a victim.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

They created a fake site and ranked on Google, was it that easy? These guys are master at scamming for sure. But I wonder how many people will give the seed phrase knowing that's the only thing a scammer needs to empty a wallet.
Good catch!

I would not agree, it is the work of an amateur who does not know that a seed can have more than 12 words, and also that there is something called a "private key". Some more serious "hacker" would make a little more effort and expand the base of possible users.

I mean the amount of time he spent to build the site, applying logic, functions to give it a complete look of an operational application, these guys are master for sure. Perhaps they studied a little about seed phrase, private key but soon they will learn it and fix any mistake they have there.

Has anyone noticed in less than 30 seconds everyone is sending request to ViaBTC's free accelerator?
Other day I needed to accelerate a transaction but I was seeing 0 remaining hourly free transaction. I kept checking for a few hours. At some points, I discovered I only have less than 30 seconds to get a slot in those 100 free hourly acceleration. 

[JollyGood]

Always remember it takes time; it's not instant. Looking into reports like this and dealing with them can be complicated. It takes time because the platform needs to check the details, find out who's behind it and decide on the best way to handle it. Sometimes they have many reports to go through so it might take a while to get to each case.

The issue of the scam website was reported to Godaddy on 17th November and today it is 21st November but the fake website has still not been taken down. I cannot think of any reason why any hosting company would not remove that website after taking a look at it and reading the reports of those reported it. This has to go down as a serious mismanagement of the situation by Godaddy.

Scammers like to take advantage of any crazy scenario that is on ground to scam people of their bitcoin. This is why they are using the high transaction fee problem to see how they can scam people by creating a fake bitcoin transaction accelerator and also reducing the fee to make it catch the attention of newbies and people that are in a rush to get their transactions confirmed, but the seed phrase is where they exposed themselves.

Yes, this has been discussed in the past they will take advantage whenever they can.

As we know, not all scammers plan their project for weeks or months in advance with huge planning, may are simply opportunistic therefore if there is any situation a scammer can take advantage of in order to scam, they will attempt it.

[NotATether]

Always remember it takes time; it's not instant. Looking into reports like this and dealing with them can be complicated. It takes time because the platform needs to check the details, find out who's behind it and decide on the best way to handle it. Sometimes they have many reports to go through so it might take a while to get to each case.

The issue of the scam website was reported to Godaddy on 17th November and today it is 21st November but the fake website has still not been taken down. I cannot think of any reason why any hosting company would not remove that website after taking a look at it and reading the reports of those reported it. This has to go down as a serious mismanagement of the situation by Godaddy.

I believe the reason that web hosts frequently fail to take down crypto scams (unless they are high-profile enough like Twitter 2020) when they are requested to by people like us is because they outsource their customer support to contractors in different countries, who have specific rules on what to escalate and ignore, so I have a feeling that these contractors are the ones ignoring the requests.

[JollyGood]

Godaddy is a huge name in the domain and hosting field therefore I think it is a serious dereliction of duty that they continue to host a website that has been reported by multiple people over multiple days, all stating the same thing: it is a scam website.

You are probably right but even if they are outsourcing their customer support to contractors in different countries they are ultimately responsible for their actions. After all, they are paying their contractors to support their team and if they are not doing their job they should outsource elsewhere.

The issue of the scam website was reported to Godaddy on 17th November and today it is 21st November but the fake website has still not been taken down. I cannot think of any reason why any hosting company would not remove that website after taking a look at it and reading the reports of those reported it. This has to go down as a serious mismanagement of the situation by Godaddy.

I believe the reason that web hosts frequently fail to take down crypto scams (unless they are high-profile enough like Twitter 2020) when they are requested to by people like us is because they outsource their customer support to contractors in different countries, who have specific rules on what to escalate and ignore, so I have a feeling that these contractors are the ones ignoring the requests.

[Lucius]

I mean the amount of time he spent to build the site, applying logic, functions to give it a complete look of an operational application, these guys are master for sure. Perhaps they studied a little about seed phrase, private key but soon they will learn it and fix any mistake they have there.

I'm not an expert in programming and web development, but that website is pretty simple and I think it took very little time for someone to build it. I still think that this is not about any professionals, but about an amateur who saw an opportunity to try to catch a naive client. I hope he knows that the hunter can easily become the hunted, because Bitcoin is not anonymous as most people still think.

Has anyone noticed in less than 30 seconds everyone is sending request to ViaBTC's free accelerator?
~snip~  

This is no surprise, it was like that before, especially if we take into account that some try to abuse that service by offering transaction acceleration services, and then try to speed up as many transactions as possible every hour. We have such members on the forum as well, it is enough to look at the Services board.

[LoyceV]

These guys are master at scamming for sure.

I would not agree, it is the work of an amateur who does not know that a seed can have more than 12 words, and also that there is something called a "private key". Some more serious "hacker" would make a little more effort and expand the base of possible users.

Still, coming up with this scam is original, and thus "a great idea". There will always be people who don't understand the importance of keeping their seed phrase offline.