Whether you want it or not, but now Bitcoin's market capitalization is already $ 10.5 billion. If one of you still does not understand how much this is a lot of money, scammers have long kept their ears open and ready for anything, Just to snatch your share.
Regardless of whether you are professionally engaged in crypto currency or just trying to enter this path, we recommend that you keep track of information on fresh exposures and, in general, about major fraud in this area as often as possible. Separately, I want to thank the resource CryptoCoinNews for the fact that the guys constantly share current information about the benches, somehow related to bitcoin and other crypto-currencies.
In general, fraud and scams involving Bitcoin can be divided into several categories:
Fake Websites
At the very beginning of 2016, one of the users of the Reddit resource lost several BTCs after investing them in a fake site, masked by the popular exchange platform ShapeShift.io. The site really was very similar to the original, except that the letter was missed in its address, which is quite difficult to notice. As soon as this information was received by the ShapeShift team, the guys immediately posted a press release, which acted as a warning to other users of the exchanger.
It is worth noting that this is far from an isolated case. There are occasional counterfeits in the image of BitStamp, Bitcoin Foundation, Blockchain.info and other popular resources.
By creating an exact copy of the popular platform, scammers catch the logins and passwords of trusting users, or draw money from witty inattentive wallets. By the way, many such fraudulent sites even occur even in Google advertising!
How to avoid problems: go only to verified links from people you know. Each time, pay attention to whether the site address is correctly written, and whether the connection is protected by an SSL certificate.
Divorce
Found on the Internet wishing to sell you bitcoins, or claims to accept payment in the crypto currency? Then, with a high probability, you are a fraudster who will disappear in the same second as you send him your money.
Scammers of this type are able to enter the trust of people in a variety of different ways. Some are so cunning that they manage to send fake IDs or cover themselves with the name and appearance of other people, often for these purposes the image of one of the specialists known in the bitcoin community is taken.
There are several types of divorce for bitcoins:
- Credible advertising of scam resources using links to fake and phishing sites, as well as empty promises of all sorts of bonuses or a 300% return on investment.
- Often attackers are represented by recommended vendors and as the main argument they use positive feedback from untrue customers and sell you non-existent BTC coins. To make their offers more attractive, BTC is offered at a lower market price.
- Advertising and sale of non-existent mining equipment on pre-order. In this case, intruders take money from inexperienced miners who hope for the amount they have paid to get the most advanced equipment for mining crypto-currency in the home.
How to avoid problems: listen to intuition, check the "black" list of scammers more often. Often too good and profitable offers turn out to be fraud. Try to trust only trusted companies and services, and always pay attention to writing the website address, and never go by the links indicated in the suspicious email. At the slightest doubt in the source, try to contact the support of this resource. If you decide to purchase or sell BTC somewhere in your city, then insist on a personal meeting or use escrow services.
Pyramids and schemes of Ponzi
No matter how professional the website looks, an experienced internet user always recognizes a financial pyramid in it. However, it is worth paying tribute to the scammers associated with the pyramids, because they are good psychologists who can manipulate people with their own greed and desire for profit. If you come across a beautiful website where you are promised a profit of unprecedented volumes (up to 100-200-300% per annum), or you often come across people who, every now and then, try to lure you to such sites, you can be sure In the fact that this is another one-day pyramid.
Financial pyramids using bitkoynov or other crypto-currencies can be represented in various images and formats, but the most popular types are those in which you are offered dividends for storing bitcoin-deposits or pools and services of cloud-based crypto-currency.
Often investors are offered attractive income with the fact that they will place their blood bit-coils in the storages of fraudulent service. In addition, it is common practice when the deposit is frozen for a fixed period, only after which it will be possible to return the invested funds. But we hope you understand that in 95% of cases you will not get any dividends, not even your own money. In 2015, there was a major scandal with the MyCoin platform, when about 3000 depositors lost a total of $ 3 billion in total. And you probably already heard about the event of March this year: over 1,000 investors attempted to pledge at 250% per annum, and lost about $ 50 million.
As for the pools and services of cloud mining, these guys offer "investors" to extract bitcoins and other crypto-currencies, without worrying about buying expensive equipment. In theory, you buy out or lease a certain amount of computing power, which are then used for mining crypto currency, but such services have a habit of suddenly disappearing from the horizon at a time when you and other deceived "interest-holders" have not even recouped their investment.Known in certain circles, Gavin Andresen strongly refuses to contact such services, even if they have been working for many years and have long proved their reliability, since the very idea of cloud mining always carries a potential danger.
There is another, less common type, scammers, disguised as an innovative and breakthrough network marketing company (MLM or multi-level marketing). Today, these companies are really gradually introducing the opportunity to operate bitkoy in private offices of consultants and participants, but even so, the network company is, in fact, a referral program, and we recommend that you bypass them.
How to avoid problems: avoid too tempting offers. If the sentence "sounds too good to be true," then most likely it is! As for network companies, even if you receive recommendations from friends, do not rush into decisions: often your friends themselves do not fully understand what they got into.
Phishing Links and Sites
Many people mistakenly think that users of crypto currency are more technically savvy, and they can not be easily tricked by phishing. Forced to disappoint you. At the end of 2015, BitPay lost BTC for a total of almost $ 2 million because of phishing. If you quickly comb the Reddit, you can find information about a variety of different phishing attacks and acts of fraud. Using services such as Bitstamp, LocalBitcoins, Coinbase and blockchain.info, try to be extremely vigilant.
How to avoid problems: go only to verified links from people you know. Each time, pay attention to whether the site address is correctly written, and whether the connection is protected by an SSL certificate.
Cheating in plugins and applications
This type of fraud has been gaining momentum relatively recently, but carries no less danger. Unfortunately, now we can not be completely protected from fraud, even in applications and plug-ins.
At the end of 2015, the Bitcoin community shook up information about the rapidly expanding Localbitcoin application, while available in the Android application store.
