This post contains the screenshots of a chat with a real scammer! I had a little fun with him once I realised he was a scammer, and I'll show you how to avoid such scams with ease.
Hello, and welcome to another post. First, I must apologize for my absence. I have been preoccupied with a lot of things. I recently moved out of my apartment to a new, more serene place, and that took a toll on me, hence why I wasn't able to write as usual. I'm full back now though.
I noticed that a lot of people have been getting scammed of their cryptocurrency, and I feel the need to make sure that that stops. This post will contain all the possible crypto scams, and how to avoid them completely. I also had a little chat with a scammer, and decided to play with him a little. You'll enjoy that as well. Let's get started!
1. Telegram help channel scams
These have got to be the most popular scamming methods of all time. Most popular cryptocurrency services, like exchanges and wallets have Telegram help channels for if you need one on one support. But there are many scammers within those channels. Here's how they do it
- They contact you first. Note that support will never contact you first anywhere. You must contact them.
- They ask you to tell them your problem. And then they ask for your email and password. You should know never to share your password with anyone. Not even support, because they shouldn't be allowed backend access to your account.
- They direct you to fill out a "help document", with a space for your private keys. Once again, you should know never to give out your private keys to anyone. Print them out, and hide them in places around your house. Never have your private keys on you, or on your phone or even in encrypted folders. Always type them out, make hard copy versions of them and keep them around your house.
2. Phishing scams
This type of scam creates an identical looking website to an exchange, and gets you to put your email and password in them. They then log in to your actual account, and you get the picture after that. There are ways to combat this:
- Always verify the URL you are visiting. If you're not sure of it, type the name of the exchange into the Google search. The first result is the real thing.
- Don't click on links to exchanges provided by others, unless you see the real URL of the exchange in there.
- Never click on bitly links leading to exchanges. Just never.
- Download the apps of your exchanges so you always stay logged in. This brings new dangers in that you need to secure the app since you're always logged in, but that's easier to do.
3. Buying new tokens with Bitcoin
This is possibly one of the dumbest scams ever, but people still fall for it. This is the one I have screenshots for.
They tell you that this new coin is the next big thing. They then ask you to invest in their token for thousands of percent gains. Most of the time, they don't have a website and can't even speak decent English, as you'd see in the screenshots. Suffice to say, there is no replacement for Bitcoin. Just ask BCH.
Here are the screenshots I promised. Enjoy!
The smartest way to avoid these scams is to not buy tokens outside of exchanges. Period.
Some good exchanges you can use are:
- Binance
- Bittrex
- Bitfinex
- Changelly(today's sponsor!)
- Huobi
- KuCoin
- Gemini
- ShapeShift
- HotBit(I verified this one myself)
- Coinbase
- Luno
Thanks for reading guys, and I hope you stay safe!
