The tactics get more sophisticated by the year and this time it appears the scammers have made it convincingly so. Today we discovered two 5 000 btc giveaway scams on youtube using the names of two prominent individuals. Whenever we come across a crypto giveaway scheme alarm bells would always go off.
In a nutshell giveaway scams are a form of social engineering in which a scammer attempts to deceive a cryptocurrency investor into believing that a major cryptocurrency exchange or celebrity is hosting a giveaway. Apple co founder steve wozniak is suing video sharing giant youtube and its parent company google for allegedly allowing bitcoin giveaway scams that use his likeness to thrive on its platform. They were met with bitcoin giveaway messages urging them to send.
Big youtube accounts are being plagued by hackers promoting bitcoin scams resembling the hack that compromised twitter. Bitcoin giveaway scams have been around for more than two years but a new twist in tactics has helped scammers make more than 2 million over the past two months from elon musk s name. Videos promoting a scam claiming that elon musk is giving away 5 000 btc or 10 000 btc have been appearing regularly on youtube.
Elon musk bitcoin giveaway scam the number of bitcoin scams using the name elon musk spacex or tesla has been growing. The hack happened on nagar s second youtube channel. Ajey nagar a popular indian youtuber with 6 7 million subscribers is the latest victim of the ongoing bitcoin giveaway scam on youtube.
Victims in fact receive nothing in return and lose the crypto. The giveaway scams are based on the promise of doubling one s funds after send an initial amount to a wallet address via qr code. It s an old free give away trick that we saw it happen on twitter in late 2017 and 2018 when cryptocurrency prices were soaring.
These bitcoin ethereum giveaway scams are not new. The number of cryptocurrency giveaway scams are rapidly increasing and in the recent times we saw many people fall victim to these scams. Due to the viral nature of how information spreads across on the internet scammers seek to take advantage of people by offering free giveaways of bitcoin or other digital currencies in exchange for sending a small amount to register or by providing some personal information.
