Avoiding Fraudsters — Beware of Phishing
In mid 2018, we released a blog for our community on the dangers of cyber attacks and what to watch out for, when transacting online and participating in blockchain projects. Whilst the original article was targeted at our members, the lessons the blog communicated have value for all. When we come across new examples, we will post them here.
Remember If you are ever in doubt who you are talking to online, stop, consider the transaction and reach out to a friend.
Let’s get started
Cloned Accounts:
In the two images below we have a FAKE account on the left-hand side and a REAL account on the right-hand side. You should always check the person’s username very carefully for misspelling. As you can see (highlighted in red), there is a very subtle change in the spelling of “adcock” to” adcoc” — missing the K, this slight change by the potential fraudster is a clone of a real user and an attempt to solicit information or funds.
Fake Emails:
Any email from the Crowd for Angels team will always come from our @Crowdforangels.com domain (andrew@crowdforangels.com).
In the example below, we can see that “James”, our potential fraudster has been in touch using an email registered with Outlook.com and has mentioned the company name as part of the unique address. Sometimes this can be misconstrued because the email provider highlights the first name “James” and the last name “Coinlisting” in this case. Therefore giving the reader the impression that James is from Coinlisting. This is NOT the case, as James is using an Outlook domain and can be from anywhere!
It is also important to take a look at the language used in the email and to see if it matches your expectations of an email be received from a professional organisation.
Here is a second email which is slightly more disguised but still a scam, selling a listing on a large well-known exchange.
The email itself points to the HitBTC.com website and there are documents attached that are professional, but look at the ‘reply’ email address and notice something is slightly off. The domain, whilst similar, is ultimately different and you could be talking to anyone, including a fraudster such as team-hitbtc.com (which currently redirects to hitbtc.com)
These types of scams are quite common and work by assimilating brands and hoping the reader accepts the source as credible. MOST websites will use a single domain and all emails will come from that single domain, so if the reply address is different, its probably a scam.
If you receive an email that you believe is suspicious, please forward it to phishing@crowdforangels.com
Unrealistic Offers:
It is often said that if an offer is too good to be true, then it probably is. Recently, there has been a wave of fraudsters posing as well as known individuals offering “FREE” cryptocurrencies, if the user first pays a small amount. This is a very common scam and is a similar to fake lotteries, items to be delivered scams and releasing funds scams. Remember, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
Another example of the ‘Unrealistic Offer‘ is that of the Discounted sales pitch. This is where a user will offer to sell you there holding at a discounted price. In the image below we see a user “007Crypto” selling 20,000 Stellar tokens worth $1600, for about $1,000 (8 ETH) — nearly 40% discount. Now on the surface, this might seem like a bargain and only a little administration work for you to realise a financial gain but 99% of the time it is a scam.
The User will not provide concrete evidence of ownership and will insist you PAY first and if you do, you will have lost your funds. Remember a quick check is to ask the user to send a very small amount of the crypto to you, showing at least control of the asset. And remember, if you do want to proceed, consider using a third party to custody the assets for the swap.
Conclusion
We hope that the above example has given you some information on what to look out for when communicating online. Make sure you double check a transaction before you commit and ask yourself if it reasonable, or simply sounds too good to be true.
we’d welcome other peoples experiences. Do not hesitate to get in touch andrew@crowdforangels.com
