Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
practicalsecurity.substack.com
Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
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Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#2lots of scams are able to continue by getting the victim to do things they wouldn't report to the police, or even to their relatives out of embarrassment
although I think it is an interesting idea that scammers intentionally make typos and absurdities, just to weed out discerning people in favor of easier victims, I think there is a larger market for meticulous more legitimate looking scams as well
this one fits somewhere in between
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#3I suggest you the following exercise to see it with your own eyes: enter a Telegram channel on a top 100 cryptocurrency, say that you are trying to recover your wallet and...
Suddenly a lot of scammer will contact you in less than 5' with techniques that you cannot imagine are real. For example, telegram handles with the same name as the channel admin but using unicode characters to make tou think it is the same account.
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#4This scam is successful because it is predicated on the same appeal that ventures like lotteries, sweepstakes, slot machines, or giveaways have (albeit accentuated with a seemingly guaranteed win, that these other ventures don't have): the belief that you can just luck into a giant treasure chest of money by expanding minimal effort.
Broadly, this is a modern version of what's known as an advance-fee fraud, which has been around for hundreds of years - paying a small amount upfront (hence the 'advance fee') under pretense of receiving a much larger amount later.
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#5lots of scams are able to continue by getting the victim to do things they wouldn't report to the police, or even to their relatives out of embarrassment although I think it is an interesting idea that scammers intentionally make typos and absurdities, just to weed out discerning people in favor of easier victims, I think there is a larger market for meticulous more legitimate looking scams as well this one fits some…
> I think it is an interesting idea that scammers intentionally make typos and absurdities, just to weed out discerning people in favor of easier victims
This is an apocryphal anecdote or theory that gets passed around, but I'm not sure how true it actually is, and certainly not universally true. In that, I think scammers are way more likely to just make typos than to setup an elaborate low-level target filter. Regardless, I've also never actually seen scammers admit to this.
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#6I suggest you the following exercise to see it with your own eyes: enter a Telegram channel on a top 100 cryptocurrency, say that you are trying to recover your wallet and... Suddenly a lot of scammer will contact you in less than 5' with techniques that you cannot imagine are real. For example, telegram handles with the same name as the channel admin but using unicode characters to make tou think it is the same acco…
What is the standard solution to this type of phish? This problem did not exist in the ASCII world, of course. Unicode is useful, but what is the best way to prevent this malicious use of it?
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#7I suggest you the following exercise to see it with your own eyes: enter a Telegram channel on a top 100 cryptocurrency, say that you are trying to recover your wallet and... Suddenly a lot of scammer will contact you in less than 5' with techniques that you cannot imagine are real. For example, telegram handles with the same name as the channel admin but using unicode characters to make tou think it is the same acco…
What is the standard solution to this type of phish? This problem did not exist in the ASCII world, of course. Unicode is useful, but what is the best way to prevent this malicious use of it?
This problem extends beyond character encoding. The average joe (and not so average alike) seems to have a hard time to distinguish official channels from non-official scammy ones, even more so when the official channel doesn't exist on a given platform ("we don't offer support via Telegram" kind of situations). Cue in some greed as well and you got a perfect recipe for disaster.
The root issue is the lack of skepticism and verification. At the same time humans have limited energy and verifying everything causes significant fatigue over time, so the problem might as well be intractable.
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#8lots of scams are able to continue by getting the victim to do things they wouldn't report to the police, or even to their relatives out of embarrassment although I think it is an interesting idea that scammers intentionally make typos and absurdities, just to weed out discerning people in favor of easier victims, I think there is a larger market for meticulous more legitimate looking scams as well this one fits some…
> I think it is an interesting idea that scammers intentionally make typos and absurdities, just to weed out discerning people in favor of easier victims This is an apocryphal anecdote or theory that gets passed around, but I'm not sure how true it actually is, and certainly not universally true. In that, I think scammers are way more likely to just make typos than to setup an elaborate low-level target filter. Regar…
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#9If it was not a scam, you are ok to steal someone's savings.
Maybe those type of scams are instant karma?
Re: Anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam
#10lots of scams are able to continue by getting the victim to do things they wouldn't report to the police, or even to their relatives out of embarrassment although I think it is an interesting idea that scammers intentionally make typos and absurdities, just to weed out discerning people in favor of easier victims, I think there is a larger market for meticulous more legitimate looking scams as well this one fits some…
Although sometimes, rarely, the victim confesses their embarrassing actions as a warning to others in a well-written firsthand perspective in a national newsmagazine [0]
[0] https://www.thecut.com/article/amazon-scam-call-ftc-arrest-w...