Beware of fake texts and phishing scam attempts.

[headingnorth]

Probably like most people I get this kind of unsolicited crap sent to my phone all the time.
I always block the senders but its like whack-a-mole you can't stop it completely.

To me they are obvious scam phishing attempts but some people will fall for them.
I received two of them this morning. One was a fake Coinbase text, another text about an
overdue toll lane charge and I never use the toll lane.

Clicking on the links in these fake texts will install a virus or malware on your phone or computer.
Or if you call the fake number in the text, you will probably be talking to a scammer.

These kind of scams are not limited to crypto. They can be fake texts from scammers pretending to be from your bank
or some government agency, etc. They have existed long before bitcoin and crypto. Last month someone supposedly
lost $330 million to a social engineering scam. Yes the victim was an elderly person.

Worse, some of them will call you from spoofed phone numbers that looks real but isn't .
But legit companies or agencies will usually never initiate a call so just don't answer anything from them.

$45 million stolen from Coinbase users in the last week
May 7, 2025

Coinbase users are falling prey to social engineering scams, costing users tens of millions of dollars in losses, according to ZachXBT.

Onchain sleuth and security analyst ZachXBT claims to have identified an additional $45 million in funds stolen from Coinbase users
through social engineering scams in the past seven days alone. According to the onchain detective, the $45 million figure represents the
latest financial losses in a string of social engineering scams targeting Coinbase users, which ZachXBT said is a problem unique among crypto exchanges:

"Over the past few months, I have reported on nine figures stolen from Coinbase users via similar social engineering scams.
Interestingly, no other major exchange has the same problem."

[DubemIfedigbo001]

Yes, their greatest preys are the elderly people, since they tend to trust processes easily without second guessing the intent behind those prompts. I still believe that in order to be on the safer side, there should be separation of concerns and Emails linking to your main exchanges, your exchange accounts, your wallets and your banking apps should not be on the same device as the one you use in surfing the internet consecutively. It would really save you a lot of trouble.

[Orpichukwu]

It seems like the target is on the Coinbase customers, according to the link you provided. If it's so, that means there might have been some data leakage, which the scammers gain access to top customers' data, which they extract their contact information and try to reach those VIP customers whom they can easily pull a heavy amount of money in one hit.

This type of scam is not new, like you have said, OP; it's everywhere, and they use different methods, but in some cases, they contact users randomly. What makes it more believable to victims is that they get the SMS or mail directly from the same details they use to register with the service in question. We all just need to be careful out there.

[batang_bitcoin]

I think that the numbers where these scammers get is from the hacked database of these exchanges too or they have someone on the back end, trying to do double agent for the exchange and for the hackers. That message is obvious that the spelling of Coinbase is even wrong. The letter 'o' for Coinbase used the number zero '0' = C0inbase. I also receive these scam messages and I am also ignoring them. But to those that can fall for this, I feel bad to them. These scammers will add some messages that there are some free money that they can get if they visit the link they message or if their funds have some problems for the victim to hurry to click it.

[headingnorth]

It seems like the target is on the Coinbase customers, according to the link you provided. If it's so, that means there might have been some data leakage, which the scammers gain access to top customers' data, which they extract their contact information and try to reach those VIP customers whom they can easily pull a heavy amount of money in one hit.

That's possible. But it could be the scammers are randomly mass spamming people knowing at least a few
will probably be Coinbase customers just by chance (which is phishing). If that's the case then I could see how they choose
to use the Coinbase name since it is the most well-known and widely used exchange in the US and some other countries.

Similar to how they sent fake toll lane text messages to my phone number. They can't be targeting me since I never used the toll lanes.

I don't think there is a person alive in the United States whose personal information hasn't been stolen.
As consumers we give out our personal information all the time to insurance companies, hospitals, banks,
every time we apply for a loan or a credit card, buy a car, sign up for cell phone service, etc.
It seems all this data is constantly being breached and stolen.

Which means our most private information including name, home address, phone number, social security number, email address,
are all floating out there being trafficked and sold on the dark web. I have long since frozen my file with all the credit bureaus
to prevent scammers using my stolen info to open credit accounts in my name. One of the biggest data breaches ever
was Experian itself getting hacked, they are one of the big three credit bureaus.

This is a company that holds the personal information of every adult in the US, and they were hacked.
They alerted me when it happened and recommended to freeze my file.

[X-ray]

To be honest, it's such a perfect time for hardware and software company to develop mechanism to detect these scams using AI.

Apple can literally integrate AI to detect such scam and be done with it, although we can block unknown number and choose to not accept call from unknown number from the setting. Still, an additional layer of security is truly needed as most of the hacker always use social engineering.

[davis196]

I haven't used Coinbase since 2013. Is email/text confirmation necessary for Coinbase withdrawals? I remember moving my BTC away from Coinbase without having to receive any withdrawal codes or any email or text confirmations. This "withdrawal code" thing seems like BS to me.
Anyway, spammers gonna spam, scammers gonna scam. This will never end. Most elderly people don't deal with crypto, since they aren't very tech savvy. I have never received any sketchy text messages in my life so far. Maybe that's because unsolicited SMS marketing isn't allowed in my country.

[nutildah]

The other day I got an email saying that I had like $15k worth of funds in my Bittrex account. The funny thing is that Bittrex already closed up shop a couple of years ago, lol. For such scamming attempts, it pays to examine the actual email address the email is being sent from. They can call name themselves Donald Trump if they want to but if the email itself is from qq49sfhl10001@renegadeserverfarms.net then you'll probably just want to report it as junk or spam and move on.

[headingnorth]

I haven't used Coinbase since 2013. Is email/text confirmation necessary for Coinbase withdrawals? I remember moving my BTC away from Coinbase without having to receive any withdrawal codes or any email or text confirmations. This "withdrawal code" thing seems like BS to me.
Anyway, spammers gonna spam, scammers gonna scam. This will never end. Most elderly people don't deal with crypto, since they aren't very tech savvy. I have never received any sketchy text messages in my life so far. Maybe that's because unsolicited SMS marketing isn't allowed in my country.

I used Coinbase and Kraken since 2018. I think they only had phone text verification back then
which now is considered unsecure. But as soon they started support for authenticator apps I switched to that.

People should be ever more vigilant with their security practices especially now when the price is pumping hard.
When the market goes up it attracts scammers like flies to shit and they may come up with new ways to scam.

[Ahyeiyeiyei]

@OP, this topic can sit well in the Beginners and help forum board. After exploring some features on the forum, I know that Bitcoin discussions is the part of the forum that is dedicated to discuss topics that is about Bitcoin while topics like this are for beginners guide board.

[Kelward]

Scammers are not relenting in their schemes to scam people so I'm thanking you for bringing this your experience to us. I believe that most of us here are experiencing scam attempts in one way or another and as the awareness is becoming stronger we won't fall victim to their wicked schemes. Sometimes these scammers collaborate with internal sources from exchanges and banks to scam customers.

I've had an experience where I got a call from my bank's supposed staff, the guy said that they were doing system upgrade and they needed information from customers. He asked if I just received an otp, I said yes and he told me to call the numbers for him, I knew immediately that he was a scammer. If I didn't have experience about otp I would've called the otp numbers and he'll steal the money in my account.
 

[Theupdude]

it is not just crypto. I too have seen fictitious FedEx and Amazon texts. It's disturbing that Coinbase users are suffering this severely. It is ridiculous $45 million in a week.  Makes one question if their assistance system is more vulnerable or if scammers merely know people aren't receiving any help there. Though not everyone is tech savvy enough to know. I constantly advise not to click on or phone back anything dubious.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

When I was still less experienced in the crypto world, then I didn't even know many ways of this scammers, when I see this kind of message or mail, I usually meet someone that knows better than me and ask them what's it was, but now I know so many of this scams, it's not new and didn't start today. I don't even know they we still be using this kind of old tricks which so many people already knows it's a scam. I have so many emails on my spam folder and those mails are just about offers that I didn't even sign up for and they had links which I need to click to claim the offer. I started getting such mail since 2019, that's why I said it's really and old strategy for scammers.

[uchegod-21]

Some of these scams are just too obvious, but because of greed, the victims don't pay attention to the obvious red flags. Like getting a congratulatory email or text for a service, win, or profit you didn't initiate or know anything about. That alone should let one know that the sender is not genuine. Of course, why should I get excited over stuff like that?

You do not need to be knowledgeable in Bitcoin, crypto at large, or even tech to know how to avoid these scammers. Simple common sense will do the magic.

Some newbies and even elderly people need to take a course on how to stay safe on the internet because these scammers don't seem like they will give up any time soon.

[HONDACD125]

I haven't used Coinbase since 2013. Is email/text confirmation necessary for Coinbase withdrawals? I remember moving my BTC away from Coinbase without having to receive any withdrawal codes or any email or text confirmations. This "withdrawal code" thing seems like BS to me.
Anyway, spammers gonna spam, scammers gonna scam. This will never end. Most elderly people don't deal with crypto, since they aren't very tech savvy. I have never received any sketchy text messages in my life so far. Maybe that's because unsolicited SMS marketing isn't allowed in my country.

Do you think scammers only use methods that are actually used by official platforms? No, they don't, they fire in the dark with the hope that some of those who are receiving those messages might fall for it. They don't even know if someone has an account on the platform they are using as the bait, they mostly send random messages to numbers that they get access to and hope that they might get someone to respond or act on it so that they can get some money out of them.

Elderly people might not be into cryptocurrencies, but scammers mostly target them because they know they are an easy target, and they are mostly vulnerable and can easily fall into their traps. We know that the elderly are not tech savvy, and scammers know this too, and that's why they trick them by asking them for their personal details and things such as their bank details, social security codes, etc. They then use those to steal their funds, and the elderly, not aware of what's happening, believe that they are getting help.

[suzanne5223]

Yes, their greatest preys are the elderly people, since they tend to trust processes easily without second guessing the intent behind those prompts. I still believe that in order to be on the safer side, there should be separation of concerns and Emails linking to your main exchanges, your exchange accounts, your wallets and your banking apps should not be on the same device as the one you use in surfing the internet consecutively. It would really save you a lot of trouble.

Well said.
The last time I use Coinbase was the time they increase their KYC level by requesting some irrelevant private information from their user, but the scamming strategy in the subject is not something new, it is something that once happened to some Binance users years ago, and from experience what usually cause this is when there's a security breach on an exchange platform which expose their user email or crypto enthusiasts using their private information (email) on the website that sell their user data.

[Taskford]

Yes, their greatest preys are the elderly people, since they tend to trust processes easily without second guessing the intent behind those prompts. I still believe that in order to be on the safer side, there should be separation of concerns and Emails linking to your main exchanges, your exchange accounts, your wallets and your banking apps should not be on the same device as the one you use in surfing the internet consecutively. It would really save you a lot of trouble.

Well said.
The last time I use Coinbase was the time they increase their KYC level by requesting some irrelevant private information from their user, but the scamming strategy in the subject is not something new, it is something that once happened to some Binance users years ago, and from experience what usually cause this is when there's a security breach on an exchange platform which expose their user email or crypto enthusiasts using their private information (email) on the website that sell their user data.

With this we should protect our data at all cost and make sure that we didn't use our main emails or any important accounts to sign up on any crypto related matters since chance for data leaking situation would really happen and we know the huge risk it possibly could bring especially if they are the type of person who easy to believe on what they read sent to them.

What people need to consider is not to entertain any random mail or text they receive so that there's no chance for them to get affected by any scamming and phising attempts. Also we need to teach our elderly about online scams so they can easily ignore those many fake promotions or  anything that possibly can harm them.

[notocactus]

With this we should protect our data at all cost and make sure that we didn't use our main emails or any important accounts to sign up on any crypto related matters since chance for data leaking situation would really happen and we know the huge risk it possibly could bring especially if they are the type of person who easy to believe on what they read sent to them.

What people need to consider is not to entertain any random mail or text they receive so that there's no chance for them to get affected by any scamming and phising attempts. Also we need to teach our elderly about online scams so they can easily ignore those many fake promotions or  anything that possibly can harm them.

We can create different emails quite easily, and if we know about risk, we will try to differentiate emails with money related accounts and other emails with non money related accounts. It is similarly with centralized exchange accounts or gambling accounts.

Furthermore, passwords used for all accounts must be different and unique without any related password pattern. Understanding risk and having proper practice are helpful for enhance security, privacy of emails, accounts and money.

[Guide] Create a strong password.

[The Cryptovator]

On mobile numbers I haven't got such messages yet, but in the mail often I receive such mail. Most probably they collect emails and numbers from data leaked from exchanges or other crypto platforms. That's the reason we always need to verify the authenticity of that kind of message or email. And shouldn't click any links they sent. When I receive such mails, then I instantly block them instead of clicking any links. We shouldn't be afraid when such a message is received, especially when we don't take any action.

However, keep in mind, scammers and hackers always find the way to scam us. So we should be greedy or shouldn't panic as well from this kind of unusual activity. In case you find something like this, make sure to loging your account and check activities so you can find out if there is really something wrong there.

[coupable]

Apple can literally integrate AI to detect such scam and be done with it, although we can block unknown number and choose to not accept call from unknown number from the setting. Still, an additional layer of security is truly needed as most of the hacker always use social engineering.

A very good and practical suggestion, but it will also have its vulnerabilities that scammers will try to exploit. Algorithms will always detect malicious links, but how can they identify them if the link is working, the domain names are registered, and there is nothing suspicious? The message that OP received on his phone did not contain anything suspicious, and I expect most users will believe the content and may click on the link. Any AI software can be useful, but let's not forget the downsides of using it, such as disrupting important messages, not to mention scam attempts.