Hello everyone, today l’m here with another piece that I consider it necessary for us especially for the newbies in the crypto space. SCAMS are everywhere online and crypto scams keeps rising as more and more people come into the crypto community. I just took it as a duty to also write about some of the trending crypto scams and how we (especially those still new in crypto) can at least protect our selves from these scam tricks. I have gathered some handful of the trending scam tricks in the crypto community and would like to bring them on board and we all take a look at them.
Websites and apps faking so far is one of the trending crypto scams some people still fall for. On the part of the website faking, it mostly happen when crypto projects are undertaking financial activities like official airdrops, token presale, and IDO. During events like these a lot of scammers pop up with very similar domains and website design to the original. But there is always something important they add, and that’s either an address for users to send crypto or a phishing link that will steal data like wallet phrases.
With the fake crypto apps scammers, mostly they target the new crypto wallets. Just like how they fake the websites, but their sole aim here is to get seed phrases and if by chance there are funds in those wallets, they empty them. A perfect example is the fake Trust wallet app that was launched on Playstore last year and those that downloaded the fake app lost all their Investments.
The better solution for the website faking is always to double check the domain name to ensure you’re interacting with the right website. To prevent downloading fake apps, l also suggest we download all apps from their official websites. Even if the app download is only possible on Playstore or Applestore, but there’s always a link from the official site that will direct to either Playstore or Applestore.
Impersonating projects official staffs is also another trending scam. This has been on the rise, and mostly very tricky. Scammers in this situation impersonate projects official staffs in the form of creating accounts with very similar usernames, copy their bio and also upload the same profile picture used by that particular official staff member/admin/moderator. Some few of them succeed with this method especially with beginners and mostly on telegram. But this can be stopped by observing these tips:
• Under no circumstance will you ever receive a dm from any legit project official first especially on telegram and on topics relating to financial assistance.
• Please always check the username of the account in particular carefully and make sure it’s exactly the same as the one documented by the project. Officials with letters like “l” and “o” in their usernames can be faked with “1” and “0” and if you don’t take care and the scammer happens to be an experienced one he might succeed scamming you.
There are still many scam tricks out there, but those most at times are quite clear and people that only want to make fast money fall for them. Let’s take for instance, the “bitcoin generator” trick where they ask you to send some eth and they double it for you in seconds, some say Elon musk is giving away 1M dollar in eth but you have to pay for gas fees before they send token, etc are all scam that only fast money making minded people will fall for. One thing I have also realized is that almost all strange direct messages l received on telegram are either scammers or people leading me to scam (with those insecured investment platforms). And from this personal experience, l have decided never to tolerate any direct message from strangers.
These are just some few, and I know there might still be some scam tricks scammers still succeed with, so please if you have any thing feel free and write e below in the comments and let’s all learn and protect ourselves from the bad guys.