The crypto business is breeding ground for all kinds of scams. In social media, one reads more and more often about supposed “giveaways” – promotions that supposedly give away cryptocurrencies. Fake profiles of well-known people are often used for this purpose. Scientists from San Diego State University show the extent of the short message platform X, formerly Twitter. Around 95,000 fraud lists were counted.
Beware of crypto gifts on Twitter
When Vitalik Buterin or Elon Musk hand out crypto gifts, alarm bells should go off. It is very likely that they are scammers who take advantage of their notoriety. The pattern is often the same. Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be sent to an address, in return you supposedly get a higher amount back.
You want to compare the best wallets?
In our BTC-ECHO comparison portal we show you the best wallets with which you can store your crypto assets safely.
To the wallet comparison
Scientists have a ‘fully automated fraud detection system’ developed, which tracks this form of crypto rip-off. With the “GiveawayScamHunter” Twitter lists are examined using conspicuous scams and fraudulent crypto wallets are extracted.
Between June 2022 and June 2023, 95,111 scam lists were uncovered on Twitter “created by thousands of Twitter accounts”. Evaluations have shown that “the scammers combined various strategies to spread the scam, including compromising popular accounts and creating spam accounts on Twitter.”
Fight against windmills
About 44 percent of spam accounts are still active. “Furthermore, we collected 327 free giveaway domains and 121 new rogue cryptocurrency addresses.” The prosecution of the transactions resulted in over 365 victims with an estimated financial loss of $872,000.
Overall, the results “underscore the urgent need for effective detection and prevention mechanisms to protect social media users from such fraudulent activities,” according to the scientists. A significant increase took place between 2020 and 2022. The trend for this year is declining. But that could also be due to a weaker crypto market, according to the study. In the past, the number of scams has increased as prices have risen.
You might also be interested in this