How To Avoid Cryptocurrency Scams

How To Avoid Cryptocurrency Scams

When it comes to money, scams always follow. And the same applies to cryptocurrencies. Although that cryptocurrency is a new trend, scammers are using old methods to steal similarly as Forex Scams.

Some of the common cryptocurrency scams to watch out are as follow:

Investment scams

This type of scams often begins with an unsolicited offer, like to become a cryptocurrency investor. Once you become part of it they will encourage you to begin investing and make money quickly. Typically, such websites might have celebrity testimonials or reviews that are fake.

However, one you complete your transaction, the offer never becomes available, and you don’t see your money again.

Impersonation Scams 

This type of scams is when a cybercriminal poses as a trusted source to convince victims to complete a cryptocurrency transaction. This can be done under the guise of government agencies, credit card issuers, banks, service providers or fake celebrities, who frequently send emails asking for full payment using cryptocurrencies.

It is important to remember that crypto currencies are not regulated by any government and are not yet widely accepted by businesses. Therefore, you should be always be careful when receiving email requests for crypto payments. To ensure that you are not a victim of a scammer, you should always verify the source and site’s safety though other communication channels before you complete the transactions. You can find a list of scammers on our Directory here as published by official regulators.

Blackmail Cryptocurrency scams

One of the oldest scamming approaches is blackmail. This is happening when you receive an email that someone has compromising information about you. Let’s say photos, videos or confidential videos and they request you to pay them money or otherwise they will release your photos or videos.

This one become a crypto scam when the scammer requests the payment in cryptocurrency, often because the transactions cannot be reversed. It is best to delete these messages and report the sender to authorities.

Social Media Scams

As it sounds social media scams are happening over social media. This is happening over a false social media post or ads that is requesting payment in cryptocurrency or you may see others leaving a review. In reality these could be bots. The post or message might even be from a friend whose account has been hacked. Alternatively, social media influencers might promote new accounts and encourage followers to sign up or send them payments. Usually, the influencers pocket these money. These are considered as the influencer cryptocurrency scams.

It is important to note, that cryptocurrency is not yet widely used payment methods and any requests to ONLY pay by this method it is likely a scam.

Giveaway Scams

Giveaway scams are happening when a victim is lured into an opportunity to send someone money with the promise of doubling the payment.

For example, this could happen, if a celebrity said through social media that if a follower sends them a certain amount of cryptocurrency, they will send back twice the amount of crypto currency.  Most of the followers fall into this trapped and they send the money directly to scammers and they never see their investment nor their money again.

Fake apps

As a digital payment method, many crypto currencies also have different apps. Cybercriminals can be skilled to copy such apps. Once users download these fake apps, they might begin sending payments directly to the crypto scammers.

Romance Scams

This type of scam is when a cybercriminal plays the part of an online love interest in order to gain the trust of victims and asking them to send money. When the victim does so, the cybercriminal puts the money in his pocket and runs away.

Phishing scams

Phishing scams are similar to impersonation scams. They often send an email and they ask for money. They pretend to be from a trusted source and they ask for a payment through cryptocurrency.

Employment Cryptocurrency Scams

This is often happening with an unsolicited job offer that lures the victims to fully onboarded to a company. They are asked to pay for that training and it is never returned back.

Warning List To Watch Out 

– Too good to be true

– You will become rick very quickly

– The websites address bar doesn’t have a “HTTPS”

– The payment request is urgent

– Threatening messages

– Payment requested in cryptocurrency

– Many enthusiastic reviews

– Payments through social media

– Unsolicited job offers

Conclusion

Before you trade with crypto take the necessary steps to protect your capital. Be very careful as anyone who offers you easy money is likely a scammer.

Related Posts