cointelegraph
Professional scammers have been targeting cryptocurrency users since the FTX crash, initiating millions of automated calls and text messages to scam them for information and money.
Clayton LiaBraaten, chief advisor at Truecaller, an application that detects fraudulent callers and messages, told Cointelegraph that fraudsters often carefully monitor crypto news to better target their victims:
"Fraudsters love volatility and current events. They can try at any time . surf the Internet. something very disturbing in the marketing sketches, they have great success."
LiaBraaten said that Truecaller also saw an increase in scams involving Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies when the market became volatile in early 2022.
He added "agents" who end up trying to steal money and launch millions of automated "robot calls". and texts that seek to exploit the "fear, curiosity and sometimes generosity" of people.
Phone numbers can be obtained in a number of ways, including through data breaches that leaked millions of numbers, or hackers scraping data from social media platforms.
The most commonly seen scam is Truecaller, where a malicious actor pretends to represent a large crypto exchange or corporate support or similar entity. Scammers also post their phone numbers on fake imitation websites to make themselves look legitimate.
Younger adults are more likely to be targeted by scammers because "there is so much information available about them because they post so much on social media," says LiaBraaten.
"They use the same handle on their Bitcoin forum as they do on TikTok and all these social media platforms [...] It's very easy to build a data graph of these individuals and then start targeting them. With the younger generations , there's only so much material a social engineer can go up against."
The abundance of information that people put online allows fraudsters to send messages or calls that are relevant to their target, making malicious communications more convincing.
"They're great psychologists and social engineers, so they try as hard as they can to put something into context," LiaBraaten said.
The first phone call or text message may not lead to financial fraud, says LiaBraaten, because agents first try to obtain or confirm information about their target to build trust.
"They create more and more details about the person and if they collect enough information, yes, they will try to get into your crypto wallet."
"There are a lot of people who don't really understand cryptocurrency," said LiaBraaten. "They're looking for vulnerable people, so it's unlikely that very experienced cryptocurrency enthusiasts will fall victim to this, because they're quite precise and very careful about what they're doing."
Regardless of a person's ability to spot a scam, he said anyone who calls or sends messages asking for personal information or passwords should stay away from it and only use official channels.
"One of the worst things you can do is talk to these guys on the phone because their job is to save you from cryptocurrency. It only takes a vulnerable moment, a minute of second guessing, and then they're gone.
In February , Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao warned Binance ' of a "massive" SMS phishing scam targeting customers.
In the scam, users were sent a text message with a link to cancel withdrawals, which took users to a fake website designed to harvest their login details.
Read More : The Next 1000x Crypto Potential
Source: cointelegraph
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