In recent years, cryptocurrency has become an integral part of the global financial system, attracting the attention of millions of users around the world. Along with the growing popularity of crypto assets and their use in various areas of life, the number of fraudulent schemes aimed at deceiving gullible investors has also increased. One of the most common places for such scams are Telegram chats, where attackers use various methods of deception to seize participants' funds. In this article, we will look at the most popular types of fraud in crypto Telegram chats, and also give recommendations on how to avoid losing your funds and maintain financial security in the world of digital currencies.
Let's take a closer look at the main SCAM schemes that are most often encountered in Telegram channels and chats dedicated to cryptocurrencies and investing in them.
"Beauties" boots
Everything is pretty obvious here, you join a profile Telegram chat and after a while a certain "half-naked beauty" writes to you in PM. This interests you and flatters your ego, since a beautiful girl wrote to you first. You can't resist and go to her profile, where you find a certain link, by clicking on which, at best, you get to a porn site, and at worst, you get a Trojan on your PC or a bot subscribes to you, which in the future will send you spam mailings to various SCAM projects. This is one of the easiest ways of fraud in Telegram and those who have spent at least a little time in applications or on dating sites will immediately see through this scheme.
Free distribution of educational materials and paid courses
Sometimes someone appears in Telegram chats who, out of the "kindness of his heart", gives away paid courses or books for free, supposedly bought by him earlier. Motivating such a step, the desire to help beginners for free. Standard phrases of such "comrades": "I have cool training material on crypto trading, if anyone needs it, write to me in a personal message, I'll send it" ... and so on. If you are interested in the course, you write to this person in a personal message, to which he sends you a link to download, and together (or instead) with the course you receive a set of Trojans, and at any time you can lose all your crypto and passwords on the exchanges. Also, some viruses can replace transaction addresses and when you try to send crypto to your address (pasting it into the desired field through the clipboard, the address is replaced with the attacker's address, very similar to yours). Believe me, such people do not just spam such comments in crypto-publics.
Disguising as the owner of a large channel
Such scammers like to write the first comment to any news, and the comment is as harmless and on-topic as possible. Then, after some time, they replace the avatar in their profile with a channel picture and change the name to something very similar, after which they edit the text of the comment. In this way, they disguise themselves as the owner of the channel, as if it was he who wrote it. The modified comment can contain anything, for example, "I opened access to my VIP channel for just a few minutes" or any other similar scam. Thus, such ill-wishers try to deceive users of a large channel, using the trust in its creator.
SID Phrase Leaks
A fairly new method of fraud. Such scammers constantly throw screenshots of their seed phrases with a good balance on the account, for example $500-1000, into chats and private messages. Thus, the scammers pretend to be newbies who do not understand the value of the seed phrase and private key. The whole point of the fraud is that such a wallet really exists and the seed phrase is real and even the balance on this wallet is real. There is just one problem, in fact, double confirmation is set up in this wallet, that is, to make a transaction, not only the owner of the seed phrase must sign it, but also another address (set up by the owner in advance). And as a result, even knowing the seed phrase, you will not be able to transfer this money to yourself. And the scammers earn money like this: if you go to the wallet and try to transfer crypto, you will first need to top up the wallet for the commission, after topping up, you still will not be able to transfer the money, and the money that you put on the wallet for the commission will forever remain with the scammer. The more such people who want to, whose stupidity and greed makes them transfer the commission to the wallet, the richer the scammer gets.
Fake official channels and popular bots and tapping games
This is also one of the most popular fraud methods in Telegram at the moment. Channels are created (often with closed comments) and Telegram bots that are very similar to official popular tapalki, such as Notcoin, DOGS, CATS, MAJOR and the like. The name of the channel and bot can completely match the original. Such fake channels and bots are distributed by advertising in various not very popular tapalki, where you need to subscribe to them to get a reward. If you play a lot of different tapalki, then you will soon be subscribed to a huge number of different publics (For example, I have long been up against the Telegram premium limit of 1000 channels and sometimes I have to unsubscribe from something to subscribe to new ones). As a result, I can have several copies of these same DOGS and MAJOR, naturally there is only one original. After some time, when everyone is expecting a drop from this or that project, these fake publics start spamming with messages like "Take your drop... One hour left..." and so on, and a link to a fake bot is published, by connecting a wallet to which you will most likely lose all your crypto. Always check the official dates of Airdrops and TGE on the official channel of the project.
What to do to avoid falling for such a trick:
- Unsubscribe more often from obscure channels that you do not read. Ideally, subscribe to channels, receive a bonus from tapalka, unsubscribe from these channels. Some of these channels may initially be quite harmless and informational, for example with dailies, and then they are inflated and sold to scammers.
- Make sure that there is a check mark next to the bot or channel (all popular projects usually have a check mark). The check mark should be white on a blue octagon. Many try to imitate a check mark by inserting a check mark emoji into the name of the bot or channel manually. (For example, in a green square).
- Check the link to the bot, bots always have unique links, so even a fraudulent bot with the same name will have a different link, although it is probably very similar.
Results
Fraud in crypto Telegram chats remains a serious problem that continues to grow along with the popularity of cryptocurrencies. Attackers are constantly coming up with new ways to deceive, using a variety of psychological techniques and technical tricks. To protect yourself from losses, you need to remember several key safety rules: do not trust strangers, check all links and addresses before clicking, avoid participating in suspicious projects and do not share personal information with third parties. It is also important to regularly update your knowledge of new types of fraud and share useful information with other users. This is the only way to create a safe environment for all participants in the crypto market and minimize the risks of financial losses. Subscribe to our Telegram channel to always be up to date with cryptocurrency news, as well as new methods of fraud in the WEB-3 world. If you have information about other methods of fraud or SCAM schemes, you can share your experience in the comments.
