Beware of Fake ICO sites

I fell for something I warned others against

So there I was, had been coding all night when the slack channel of an ICO that I was monitoring buzzed and what appeared to be a message from somebody I had been communicating with telling me of the early access program and directing me to the early access website.

And like a fool I went to the site and sent some ETH. After all I had already checked out the contract code and it was OK. I have previously ensured that the link was verified on etherscan, yes it was fine. And I had been to this site many times before.. or so I thought.

I will give them credit — they made a wonderful replica of the genuine website and made a plausible argument. I should have been wary when I asked him what gas to send and he said normal. You ALWAYS have to send extra gas to a crowdfund contract. But hell I was whacked and I just sent the amount that I had been planning to send anyway.

The slack channel owners had been working hard keeping spammers of their channel I guess I was just unlucky that he got one message through to me. He was already removed by the time I went back to say thanks — a few seconds before I said something more colourful on realising that I had been had.

So, here is the warning. NEVER go to an ICO site linked by a PM on a slack channel. Never trust the website unless you typed in the address yourself.

Damn, I knew all this and still fell for it. Don’t do the same.