Cardano, XRP and LINK "massive giveaway" scams

[Len Saldua]

Somebody has got to talk about this.
For the past few months, a particular kind of ad has been popping on my youtube streams. It looks crazy legit, but not
to someone who comes from an image manipulation background and is up to date with the latest A.I. voice cloning and
deepfake technologies. On top of that I also have nearly 4 years as an investor / trader in the crypto industry, so I know a scam when I see one.
And trust me people, this IS a scam.
"Just Scan the QR code and it will direct you to a link where you can send us your ADA /LINK / XRP to be elegible " ? C'mon now.
But something has got to be said about the level of sophistication in these scams.
You can actually see Charles Hoskinson,Brad Garlinghouse and Sergey Nazarov speaking to the camera and moving their lips
while sounding exactly like the people mentioned. The scripted announcement is also extremely professional ( and clearly A.I. scripted )
and would have anyone believe this is 100% legit.
So with a combination of Chat GPT scripting, voice cloning and Deepfake ( or similar ), these scoundrels are robbing unsuspecting
newbies of millions.
A good example of A.I. becoming a force for evil, rather than good.

[Yogee]

This sounds funny to me since I don't fall for giveaways on social media but this is a serious matter. I've seen some AI videos myself and I agree that there are still ways to recognize that it's fake so imagine if they become more refined in the coming years. YT and other platforms with video sharing should be quick to address this.

[bluebit25]

People who have a lot of exposure to technological change can probably partly avoid these troubles. Although bad intentions appear, it cannot be denied that they have great potential to be applied to life and beyond. But changing too quickly also becomes risky because of adaptation. I think that inherently, the cyber environment also reflects the similar nature of life, the balance of good/bad. So how we choose to approach and deal with that, as well as spreading positive messages, will bring balance back. There are things that I saw on YT a long time ago about how to use AI labeled with crypto to navigate FOMO, but in reality it is only a small part of other complex problems.

[Yudhisthir]

This has been going on for years. Sometimes it's elon musk, sometimes it's Rock and sometimes it the bill gates.
Sometimes they just show a completely different video and put a overlay to a fake giveaway where people get double or x10 money for every amount they send.
And the most compelling part is the number of subscribers they have, it seems like a real account to most. Youtube takes them down after some reports but still many people are falling for it.
The only way to stop them is realizing that there's no giving money to get more money.

[Dunamisx]

When the scammers want to attack, they set target on what other people so much trust in, if you look on at the digital coins involved, you will see that they are very common and well performing ones this is one of their first target they put in place as their number one plan, the selection procedures, we should always make more intensifying research about any cryptocurrency investment we are trying to offer or recommend others on when we too are no too sure or confident in.

[khiholangkang]

It's sad that many victims of this kind of thing, give away from social media is very and not from the account of the altcoin project developer, you have to be really careful, and it can be sure it is a scam.

If maybe it was a gift from a certain influencer I don't think it would give such requirements, but how could it be, that people who are fomo for this kind of gift will voluntarily do any kind of requirement, the thing that needs to be applied is literacy so that you can read the opportunities and consequences of problems like this kind of fraud.

In my area there are also many things like this, but not altcoin projects but things like that with the same scheme.

[crwth]

This shows how some people are gullible when it comes to "giveaways". As you can see, those are why it's so effective because of the "free" part and not so much the effort to earn the wins. You must know why you are joining and know that it's legitimate to whom it is targeted. A lot of hackers would use famous people to get people hooked and the addition of AI is going to be another problem.

[fapar]

This sounds funny to me since I don't fall for giveaways on social media but this is a serious matter. I've seen some AI videos myself and I agree that there are still ways to recognize that it's fake so imagine if they become more refined in the coming years. YT and other platforms with video sharing should be quick to address this.

I agree with you, every day on Twitter messages containing information about giveaways and airdrops are sent en masse. All this is confirmed by screenshots and “Musk personally”. But with video things are more complicated. As they say DYOR. I myself recently reacted in the Discord channel to a chat message about token claiming (because this event was officially supposed to happen) and went to the site where I connected my wallet. And only when the wallet asked me to authorize a transaction for the entire amount of USDT, I realized that I was very mistaken. I was lucky and there was no ETH on my wallet to pay for the fee 

[electronicash]

the most deceiving part is that its advertised on youtube. i saw before i can see the video Brad Garlinghouse speaking about the airdrop they are going to do and it took more than 3 minutes of him speaking that i had to skip ads because when he said we have to deposit coins and they will double the amount, that when i can tell this is a scam.

have not seen Charles or Sergey Nazarov yet but only Brad, depends probably on the demographics but yes the ones who are going to believe will send coins to them.

[Husires]

Fraud develops with the development of technologies. Chat GPT scripting, voice cloning and deepfake make it very easy, but all fraudsters have the same rule from the beginning of history, which is that they appeal to your greed and try in every way to convince you that it is a golden opportunity for a limited time, and if you do not invest it, you will lose your money.
Think several times, don't invest when you think it's too good to be true, and ask when you're skeptical.

[livingfree]

I think this has been existing even years ago and these websites don't do anything into not allowing them to advertise on their platforms. Google/YouTube? they have never been too hard on these and that's why there's always like these videos and giveaway scams on their platform.

They play videos on the background like Ted talks, right? and then there goes the instruction on what must the viewers do to receive these fake giveaways. Yeah, they'll receive nothing in return after sending this and that money to their scam address.

I've seen one like with Elon Musk video and these scammers use it with their fake giveaway, what we can do is to report them to YouTube, report the video.

[Bushdark]

I have seen similar videos like the one you have mentioned on Facebook and Twitter many times as if they are real people talking about the project. This is why we need to be aware of many scam attempts so that we don't fall victim to cheap scam to take away our money.
Thanks op for this awareness and I believe the newbies would be ready and get prepared to adjust the way they click on different links with the attempt of checking out what the link or the information is all about. Let's spread the news.

[TravelMug]

I think everything has it's good and bad side, and that's what happen to deep fake technologies and AI stuff. Yes, specially the deep fake, it has been here for the last year or so and then coupled with AI, it's a very dangerous combinations. I remember a similar video with Elon Musk and then Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. But I will tell you that for those who have been here for a long time, we will not fall for this kind of trick very easy though. You just have to used your common sense and you can see that this is an obvious scams and this individual are not going to give us free money. So that will be our protection here, used logic and I think we will be good. For those who have fall though, it's going to be a expensive lessons for them.

[AmoreJaz]

I think everything has it's good and bad side, and that's what happen to deep fake technologies and AI stuff. Yes, specially the deep fake, it has been here for the last year or so and then coupled with AI, it's a very dangerous combinations. I remember a similar video with Elon Musk and then Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. But I will tell you that for those who have been here for a long time, we will not fall for this kind of trick very easy though. You just have to used your common sense and you can see that this is an obvious scams and this individual are not going to give us free money. So that will be our protection here, used logic and I think we will be good. For those who have fall though, it's going to be a expensive lessons for them.

there are several things that a user can validate the claim or the instructions given by these popular personalities
- check in the official website of the company and see if there is really an ongoing giveaway or promotional activity
- check in their official social media sites because usually they will post such announcement first in their social media account
- if you are not sure about the site, check in whois.com or any other record listing sites and you will see when they were created (normally, they are newly created)
- beware of phishing links because they can easily wipe out your funds in your wallet if you are too gullible with connecting your wallets to their site
- don't get too excited with small rewards as these scammers are just giving the bait to naive users
- don't be greedy, too much ambition will give you so much trouble later on

[Kelward]

This sounds funny to me since I don't fall for giveaways on social media but this is a serious matter. I've seen some AI videos myself and I agree that there are still ways to recognize that it's fake so imagine if they become more refined in the coming years. YT and other platforms with video sharing should be quick to address this.

This are very worrisome developments and many people will fall for these A1 cloning scam, when the images and voices seems so real, it'll take a tech savvy person or someone who has been enlightened about what has been happening not to fall for the scams. Normally I'll easily fall for these scams when I see a person that is concerned with a perticular project talking about it and I'll tend to believe everything said by the person, this is why I'm very grateful for threads like this that enlightens an average person like me. Best thing to do is to keep ignoring them or like OP, inform others so they don't fall for these scams, lastly is to be very careful about promises of free rewards on the social media.

[Bureau]

Earlier on YouTube these scammers use host scam giveaway by live streaming an event video of any celebrity. There was nothing to give in these giveaways as first a payment has to be made to be eligible for the giveaway. That didn't worked for them as the community was reporting those video.

Now they are using AI to again do the same thing with sophistication. They might have been able to convince a good amount of newbies with this new technique. Those who have been in this industry would know that giveaways are the biggest fraud on YouTube or any other platforms.

[DeathAngel]

These type of scams will always exist because sadly people are still naive enough to fall for them. It reminds me of the fake Elon giveaway scams from a few years ago (send X amount of Bitcoin to a certain address & get double back). I mean you have to think if something is too good to be true then it probably is. Stay smart & stay safe out there.

[kotajikikox]

AI actually is being used now by lot of scammers even in direct calling in phone , a friend of  mine almost got scammed because Her mother called her seeking for Money and yeah She sounds like her and completely the same voice but to her surprise that on the other phone Her mother is talking to her sister that is why they found out that on the other line is scammer.

so what more in internet that scammers randomly targeting people that they believe an easy target? or someone that they believe to be a good fake client?

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

A few years ago, like in 2010, after Bitcoin started and some other altcoins surfaced years later, during that time, there were some better legit ways of earning free cryptocurrency, but since last year and this year, there are not up to 50% legit ways of earning free cryptocurrency. Maybe there are only 20% legit ways, and the rest, 80%, are scams.

The only legit way for an individual to get their desired cryptocurrency is for them to buy it. If cryptocurrency enthusiasts are more concerned with how they can buy their desired cryptocurrency instead of how to earn free coins, then they will have a reduced risk of getting scammed.

[kentrolla]

Not only AI, everything digital has been used for more evil than good. People who are associated to crypto or AI will be able to identify this scam as logically this is not how things work but for beginners or an average joe it would be nearly impossible to distinguish whether it's real or fake and they won't have any reasons to doubt.

People should get one thing straight in their mind that nothing comes free and easy, don't believe whatever you see even if it's a reputed figure, rather do your own research as these scammers are leaving no stones unturned to milk innocents of their money.