Scammers sure hope a lot of people would, according to a report yesterday (Jan. 20) from researchers at internet-backbone provider Akamai (opens in new tab). The crooks, “utilizing the crypto frenzy to create new ways to exploit victims with clever scams” wrote Akamai researcher Or Katz, began by posting “news” links in social-media groups devoted to cryptocurrency.
How not to fall for this
Let’s stop right here for a moment: The best way to avoid being taken in by scams like these is to not trust random links that strangers post on social media. You can visit the links — it’s unlikely these days that just opening the page will lead to trouble. But before you interact with one of the websites in any way, be very wary of claims that seem to good to be true — don’t let greed cloud your judgment. There’s also a TurboTax phishing scam going around, so don’t fall for that either. Also, you should always check the web address of the site you’re visiting to make sure it matches what it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, that’s not always easy to do on a mobile device, so scroll up to the top of the browser window to see the address field, or try to use the browser’s “share” function to copy-and-paste the site address into a text file or draft email.
Jeff Bezos says hi
Don’t miss this limited opportunity
This is a classic scam tactic: Create a sense of urgency so that the potential victim doesn’t have time to properly investigate a claim and instead moves ahead due to fear of missing out on something. It’s all for naught, of course. Hand over your Bitcoin or Ethereum tokens to the crooks, and you’ll never see them again. Akamai wasn’t able to tell how much money the scam took in, but it was able to determine that the suckers who landed on the fake token-offering site were located roughly evenly in North America, South America and Asia. More interestingly, 98% of the site visitors were using mobile devices — 56% Android, 42% iOS — instead of desktop computers on which it’s easier to see a site’s URL. But perhaps that statistic shouldn’t be surprising. “It’s no secret,” Katz wrote, “that mobile devices have become the primary means for consuming social media, gaming, reading news, and communicating via messaging applications, which drives the surge in victims landing on scams via mobile channels.”
