How do you get to know that you're trapped in Cryptocurrency scams? In today's article, we will talk about this issue and will try and get to know Twitter users in particular become victim of such scams.
The best thing you can do to avoid such scams is to be extra careful about the traps. See the posts related to crypto critically.
What if someone sends you a direct message (DM) on Twitter, providing you login information of some cryptocurrency exchange account and asking for help to withdraw the amount? Well, the best thing you can do is to avoid such messages. But, what if it is real?
What if it is your chance to be millionaire? Let's find out how we can expose these scams and list down all the suspicious things that will help us understand the whole fraudulent process. We will present to you one such incident which was discovered by the experts of a famous security company.
How Do The Cryptocurrency Scams Happen To Twitter Users?
Some stranger named Adam on Twitter sends you a message. In that message, he provides the login information of his cryptocurrency account, saying that his account has six digit amount. Apparently, the sender of the message wants you to help him withdraw the amount.
Surprisingly, if you login to that website with the given information, you will enter a personal account, and you will see similar amount as told in the message is there. So far, everything smells fine.
What To Do When Faced With Cryptocurrency Scams?
Now calm down and think peacefully. If you have to withdraw amount of thousands of dollars, would you ask some stranger for help? No? Not just you, anyone who can use his reason won't do this. This reason alone should be enough to ignore such messages.
But we want to expose this scam from every aspect, so we will continue reading this. Let's suppose some stranger genuinely needs your help, how would you check if there's something phishy?
First, let's try and get to know this stranger little bit more. And we will start this by checking his Twitter account in the first place. The stranger we are talking about in this article, who sent the message had zero followers, and as many people he was following to, means zero.
As we know, people use social media platform to follow other users and increase their own followers. But if someone is sending you such message, and has zero followers and he is following to none, this clearly indicates that this account was created for fraudulent purposes.
فراڈ کی دیگر نشانیاں
The second suspicious thing here is that, when the security company sent Adam (sender of the message) a message, there was no reply for weeks. This also shows that everything is fraud. Because it is quite possible that the same message may have been sent to hundreds if not thousands of other people who were sent the same password and username.
How many people do you think would have already tried to log in? Another suspicious thing here is that the person Adam, who sent the message had his name written in password. When we checked his Twitter account, the name was different there.
What if the scammer hacked someone else's account and want us to participate in his criminal activity? (Actually, there's no cryptocurrency in this account, which you will get know later).
The last suspicious thing, which the security experts discovered very easily, website where the cryptocurrency was located, had a space in its URL. This is how scammers try to bypass the security in the email account where you get a notification about a new message on Twitter.
When the experts from the security company actually visited the website, all the danger flags started to appear. The design of the site was very simple and uncluttered. When this domain was searched on Google, only various pages related to this domain showed up.
The notable thing here is, if you search for even a relatively small cryptocurrency exchange, it must have some reviews on Google or other forums. This site has no reviews, which is screaming that this is a fake site.
Before we get to the real threat of such cryptocurrency scams, let's expose it further.
Cryptocurrency Scams: More Payment Needed To Withdraw
When you start withdrawing money, you find out that to do so you need another password, called trade key, which no one gave you. But then you are told that you can withdraw money from within the platform, for which you need a new account. You have to set this account status as VIP and add money to it from Adam's account.
After doing this you will be able to withdraw money from the account, because you will have all the passwords required for that, right?
To get VIP status for this new account you need to deposit some money into it, for which you need to provide your cryptocurrency wallet details. When you do this, nothing will be able to be withdrawn from there, on the contrary, your own wallet will also be wiped out.
This platform itself is a phishing site, which never had any cryptocurrency. It turns out that scammers recently started such a campaign, creating fake websites and sending people their login information on Twitter.
How To Recognize Cryptocurrency Scams?
Two things can make any cryptocurrency platform suspicious. First, cryptocurrency platforms never directly ask for your wallet details for payment. Instead you are sent the payment address to which you have to pay from your wallet.
Second, none of the popular financial platforms will ask you to use third-party funds to manage the money you already have on the platform.
Ask for money to withdraw money first, create a new account for it, then request payment to withdraw money from one card to another? This seems very strange.
And we haven't even talked about the poor English and bad design, which are always the hallmark of phishing sites.
How To Avoid Cryptocurrency Scams?
In order to avoid being scammed by scammers, it is important to know how they operate, so that you can avoid these cryptocurrency scams by spotting the inconsistencies in their operations. An example of this is the incident described before you, and you saw the aspects in which we exposed this fraud.
When You Are Given Such Offers, Ask Yourself Some Questions
Whenever you are faced with such situations, do ask yourself some questions. Such as:
- Why a stranger is asking for help from me? Why not someone he know?
- Could it be a bot?
- The stranger doesn't reply, isn't it strange?
- The message I received is not suspicious? (eg, having spaces in the domain name, to fool mail filters)
- What do the people have to say about the site I am being asked to visit?
- کیا مجھے اُس ویب سائٹ کا ڈیزائن متاثر کر رہا ہے؟ (یقیناً تمام ویب سائٹس کے ڈیزائن آپ کو متاثر نہیں بھی کرتے۔ لیکن ہم سب ایسی سائٹس سے پیسے نہیں ٹرانسفر کرتے)
- Is there a logic behind what I am being asked to do?
- Is it normal to pay through third party funds to transact with money already on the platform?
- Can an offer so good be true for nothing?
Take a deep breath and answer yourself these questions. You will better know the truth. This will save you from any potential loss chasing easy money.
The abundance of suspicious items in this example clearly indicate that it is a fraud. But not too much, just one alarm should be enough to alert you. Even if you receive such message from your friend, be very careful. Who knows that your friend's account is also hacked and being used for such activities?
Sadly, even the most careful people are human after all. And many times they also fall prey to such cryptocurrency scams. So it is better to be extra careful and hire a reliable security company. Security companies usually block suspicious links and fraudulent websites.
Read More:
10 Things You Need To Do To Avoid Hacking Attacks
Different Types Of Internet Scams And How To Avoid Them?
