Welcome back to the Scam Logs. Today, we will touch upon a scam we covered a major instance of on this very site. I’m talking about the infamous giveaway scam.
Now, how do these scams work? Well, they are very simple, and yet oddly dangerous for the unwary. A post goes live somewhere that states if you give someone a little crypto, they will quickly return it with massive interest.
And then they don’t give you any money back.
It’s a trick of taking a little money from many people. The average internet denizen is offered chances at giveaways all the time, so the framing of the scam is not that strange or out of place.
But where do you see these right now? Well, the biggest place is social media platforms. Twitter and YouTube are the highest targets, but it would not be surprising if they show up on Facebook or even Snapchat. YouTube and Twitter have taken steps to remove them from their sites, but with the sheer volume of content to manage generally, it is hard to stamp them all out of existence.
But how do these scams go huge? They are a famous scam type for a reason. Well, it’s the same core trick as the last scam we covered: impersonation and easy propagation. These scammers will use many tricks and hacking methods to look affiliated with or even use the accounts of famous or noteworthy individuals.
And, yes, now that we all know about this type, it may seem baffling how devastating these scams have managed to be, but it’s always good to be cautious. That’s the whole idea of the Scam Logs, to know what might be out there so we can more easily avoid scams. So, if you see a giveaway of crypto that costs crypto, always be suspicious. Not fearful—just cautious.
That’s always the right mindset for these things.
And come back next week for another lesson about what to look out for on that wild internet of ours.
