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Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

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Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#351

Post by skim_milk »

kooshball wrote: post #331
skim_milk wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one "accidentally" wire transfer millions of dollars? At $10k in America, KYC and AML laws force banks to step through extra layers of verification to wire such amount. It's virtually impossible for someone to accidentally wire millions, which would likely involve a mandatory in-person meeting with the bank customer to verify their credentials and purpose. If somehow you get through an in-person meeting wit…

easier than you think. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/15/how-one-familys-nightmare-il... https://www.nar.realtor/wire-fraud

Man, BoA sure lets a lot through. I couldn't even wire 8k without my physical presence - this was during COVID lockdown of all things as well! I know nothing of buying a house, but when I bought another, more expensive car that required a loan, the bank went through the whole rigamaroo calling a bunch of people to verify all the details (after all, I was going to buy their car with their money) - took nearly an hour to actually get the money after being approved for the loan days beforehand with all their internal busywork. All for something that, what, might have covered half of the wages for the day of the employees working there at the branch office after three years of interest? I think I'll be staying with my tiny, irrelevant local bank after all!

I worked at a financial institution, no way you could open an account, deposit some spare change, and then withdraw 900k after a few weeks especially in America. Compliance would be all over that account, which is probably why they got the money back anyhow because the crooks would have a lot of talking to do after getting that much money in their account. KYC and AML is required for both sides of the wire transfer.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#352

Post by schrectacular »

phone8675309 wrote: post #338
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's got to be the biggest, most massive security hole I've ever seen brushed off. Well said. This goes hand-in-hand with the victim blaming that goes on in cryptocurrency circles. Any time a story like this appears, defenders come out of the woodwork to insist that it's the victim's fault for doing something or not doing something else. Even the linked Twitter thread is full of replies from people suggesting that…

> Crypto seems to appeal to people who like to think that they are smarter than the average person and therefore will succeed by self-managing their finances right down to the private keys. I've been calling them Dunning Krugerrands for this reason, and I suggest others do as well.

I hereby award you five internet points. As part of your prize you Al's get to name this currency.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#353

Post by randomhodler84 »

phone8675309 wrote: post #339
DoctorOW wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I heard about Ethereum this was my exact fear. Programmable money sounds like a terrible idea from the perspective of business owner. Does this mean I have to check every transaction I enter to run arbitrary code with full access to my wallet? That is of course assuming the code isn't able to break out of any other protections there might be and pay for the ETH I'm getting with my data.

It boggles the mind that someone looked at money and thought "you know what, this is too simple, let's shoehorn in a Turing complete programming language - that'll fix it!"

It boggles the mind that someone is so lacking imagination that they couldn’t imagine a use for such technology.

Ignorance is unbecoming.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#354

Post by floodyberry- »

chrisco255 wrote: post #313
ricardobeat wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, does anyone know Thomas, or how did they amass 100M in ETH? The websites provide absolutely no identity of anyone involved (as is very common for crypto). The Twitter account is 4 months old. No mention of the person or the Arrow company on the internet previous to this episode seems to exist. Other than looking at the chain records, how should we believe that any of these stories are true?

I know of Thomas through the Rocketpool community Discord (a decentralized Ethereum staking pool). He's a regular on there. And I'm one of 90ish members in the Arrow Discord. It's a super early stage startup that's still in the conceptualization phase. I don't know how he got his capital, I don't know his background. But he's been an engaged member of the RPL community and seems genuine in his interest for drone tran…

when he invites you to get in on the ground floor of an amazing opportunity, I suggest you take him up on it. He's rich so it definitely won't be a scam!

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#355

Post by glandium »

sunir wrote: post #277
dimgl wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised anyone reading this story wouldn't conclude that the real takeaway is to just not engage with cryptocurrency at all. This ecosystem is so convoluted it just turns me off at every level.

I woke up this week to dozens of comments on a video from a speaker at SaaS Connect 2017 (previously known as The Small Business Web Summit) to learn she was arrested and charged by the DOJ this week for laundering $4.5 billion in crypto. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspira... Billion! Since this is an allegation, we must presume innocence. However I still cannot imagine what planet would ent…

It's worth noting that those 4.5 billions had a value of 75 millions or so when they were stolen. It's also worth noting the "heist" happened in 2016, so before that talk.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#356

Post by cdata »

Barrin92 wrote: post #322
cdata wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one is better off concentrating power in a centralized authority with the scale and (lack of) accountability of Facebook. Specialization doesn't come into it, although it is worth observing: your comment presupposes that in order to benefit from specialization, one must subject themself to exploitation.

I'll be the first person to agree that there's plenty of wrong with Facebook, but many people are better off because they have access to platforms like Facebook even with their flaws. If you've ever seen online small business in a lot of developing countries, a significant amount of money they make is through online marketplaces. they don't stay there because they are being exploited, it's because centralized platfor…

To the extent that you are saying that specialized services can be built upon a generalized infrastructure and that people can benefit from that, I agree!

But, the commenter I take issue with said that it's good actually that we are just re-inventing banks on top of the blockchains, and the evidence that they offered is that it was good actually that we invented Facebook on top of the decentralized web.

Actually, Facebook is bad. It's not bad because it offers a service that people clearly need. I think we can all agree that an easy publishing on-ramp is great, and that it should exist. Facebook is bad because its creators use it as a tool for mass manipulation and exploitation of its users, and the web as we know it facilitates this through a combination of its flaws and missing features.

Facebook has created some useful services, but that doesn't mean we want to build Facebook again on a newly conceived network infrastructure. In web3 we see a latent opportunity to design new infrastructure that improves on the flaws and power imbalances of the previous one. But, if we seek only to re-invent the exploitative institutions of the past atop a new substrate, then frankly it's a waste of (most) people's time (I'm sure some VCs and early adopters have a lot riding on it, though).

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#357

Post by fragmede »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #350
markstos wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are checks in place to make difficult to buy an SSL certificate for the official domain of a bank. At least Chrome tracks malicious websites. By comparison, there seem to be no checks in place to prevent writing an ethereym contract that drains a victim’s wallet.

The ACH banking protocol doesn't have these either. This isn't Ethereum's job. It's an L2's job. Whichever ones you choose to engage with. But, they'll all be interoperable.

Anyone that's sent crypto from Polygon to Coinbase would disagree about interoperability.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#358

Post by fragmede »

stevage wrote: post #312
pengwing wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a high-velocity ride in a cage of aluminum? I don't want to engage with that at all. I am so surprised that safety measures such as airbags and seat belts are discussed. Obviously cars are too dangerous to exist.

From day one, cars were understandable by ordinary people and useful to them. They have become more complex, but always useful. Crypto is neither understandable nor useful.

Not that this legitimizes crypto, but early cars were not understandable by ordinary people. They were loud and finicky, and toys of the rich who had the time and energy and money to spend on them until the technology matured and mass manufacturing brought their price way down.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#359

Post by fragmede »

sumedh wrote: post #332
alex504 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

itunes isnt p2p

You missed the point. People wanted easy access to music, itunes provided that service. Right now with the world of crypto is confusing to the average guy, so hopefully in the future someone will create a good UX and the underlying to protocol for instant decentralised payments.

The subtleties of crypto are inscrutably intricate, but for simple transfer between two parties, Coinbase exists and its UX is easy enough. Of course, it's the opposite of decentralized, which defeats the point.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#360

Post by sizzle »

How much of his ETH was at stake here?? Why did they go through so much effort to target him on the hopes that he would 1. Have a large sum of coins 2. Be foolish enough to reveal said account.

I love that he wasted 2 weeks of these scumbags and exposed them. I hope they can trace their email address and nab the real people.

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