News flash: you were social engineered into buying ETH in the first place.
If a scammer scams you out of a scam, do you come out ahead?
It worked for PT Barnum.
Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
61–70 of 423 posts
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an extremely basic check. If I'm going to be getting on a plane to see someone, I want to do a basic background check.
But what are you checking with a call? That just seems like creating a false sense of security since there is virtually no additional “useful” information that is being sent over the audio channel above and beyond what is in text.
I'm checking to see if this Linh Nguyen that some random Discord user referenced me is the Linh in front of me on Zoom. A phone call isn't ideal, but it's still better than nothing. At the very least, there's one more identifying factor though that may help with spotting any scams, but yes, it can be false sense of security if you rely purely on it.
If I'm John Doe and I made some merge requests to your open source project for a couple of weeks, is that alone really enough to potentially meet me in some city far from yours? That's essentially what the author was prepared to do.
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#63"extremely thorough social engineering" Not really, it seems like the usual being extra flattering to earn favours (or worse). The first two messages would have raised several red flags with me. > He's currently working at Ubisoft and offers to help with 3D design and animation Like if I worked for Ubisoft I'd have time to do 3D design for free for some other company.
> Like if I worked for Ubisoft I'd have time to do 3D design for free for some other company. Why is that so hard to believe? It's like suggesting that no professional software engineer would ever contribute code for free into an open source project in their free time. My basic assumption if somebody send a patch to an open source project is not that I'm being social engineered -- it is that they're either using the…
I think because the stereotype is that in a gaming company work life balance tends to not be that good.
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#64I still fail to understand how the smart contract metaphor of "here is some obfuscated code from a third party, please give it access to all your money, kthx" has managed to survive at all. I mean, really, no one saw this coming? It's just the Trust Problem all over again. Decentralized reliance on automatic software still requires trust that the authors of the software won't scam you. It all comes down to trust. And…
> Who in their right mind trusts contracts someone sends you on Discord? No one. > It's just the Trust Problem all over again. Decentralized reliance on automatic software still requires trust that the authors of the software won't scam you. It all comes down to trust. It does, but you get to decide who you trust rather than being forced to trust one of a small number of large institutions. If you want, you can deleg…
> but you get to decide who you trust
And if you trust the wrong people? Per the linked twitter thread, the author trusted the scammers! They only avoided the scam because they were competent to read the contract code for themselves. Is that the standard you want applied to all transactions? Does that seem likely to lead to good outcomes?
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#65The other thing to understand is that legitimate interactions look just like this in the crypto space.
Scammers ripping each other offer on discord. Today it’s apes, next week it will be houses. I can’t believe they can convince people to lend liquidity to bridges, myself.
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#66This was an absolutely fascinating and chilling story. The thing that struck me about it is the scam didn't work for a few reasons: 1. He typically had a practice of not using his main wallet for things like this. 2. He got wary and actually read the smart contracts. This is a level of technical competence required that's going to mean most people have to offload this to a trusted intermediary. And then what's the po…
The purpose of decentralization is solely censorship resistance. It has nothing to do with consumer protections, consumer education, or easier to check software.
Censorship and consumer protections go together since they're both roles regulators play.
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is over $160M in his address. https://etherscan.io/address/0xb1e9d641249a2033c37cf1c241a01... He could have approved a malicious contract to drain the lot.
I see. But.. why? Isn’t that a remarkably bad idea? Or is there some crypto advantage to keeping every last coin in the same basket? Other than it being a flex.
Maybe it’s only a fraction of his coins in that wallet? Maybe he does have other wallets with similar amounts or more, but just doesn’t admit to it?
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#68I don't understand why in the world Thomas wouldn't directly communicate via phone and video chat to any of these people first before doing serious business and potentially traveling across the country for random anonymous folks on Discord. Social engineering is so much easier when you engage in faceless, voiceless communication. This could've been shut down so much more easily if they put a real human being to match…
"Discord" by itself is a pretty big red flag to be honest. I would personally not engage in any business or industry where that is the main communications platform.
Billion dollar deals are negotiated on Discord all the time.
Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a horrible take on a legit person and project.
The aircraft and/or taxi service might be legit but all the crypto around it is useless complexity at best or a complete scam at worst. If you legitimately wanted to develop an aircraft taxi service, you do not need to involve crypto in any way. Even if you wanted to accept it for payments it's an auxiliary component that merely accounts for it and converts to fiat at some point. The DAO or whatever crypto bullshit i…
Yeah. I agree with you completely.
I am not a cryptocurrency skeptic, but my level of trust for a “DAO driven aircraft / taxi service” is exceedingly low.