One of the most popular types of scams currently involving cryptocurrencies is the so-called romance scam. As SHARD company, which evaluates the security of digital assets, explained to socialbites.ca, attackers find their victims in social networks and instant messengers using other people’s photos and accounts. They establish trusting relationships with victims, involve them in love affairs, and then deceive them with crypto assets.
Some time after the meeting, scammers offer victims to participate in an investment project with cryptocurrency. They persuade their victims to invest small amounts and then manipulate them into investing more. It could be a cryptocurrency project, a custom-built scam app, or simply a separate website, platform, or mobile app.
Single people often fall victim to these types of scams, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Scammers read the situation of their interlocutor well and can understand that a person may be uncomfortable with his partner, even if he is married. Once they have this knowledge, they pay attention every day and hit it where it hurts.
Scammers often emphasize the security of transfers and recommend not discussing this issue with anyone. They can carefully instruct the victim in communicating with bank employees so as not to suspect suspicious transactions.
To increase trust, scammers several times allow the victim to withdraw cryptocurrency funds to foreign exchange accounts and even debit cards. But after such a withdrawal, rates often increase, creating a “window of opportunity” for scammers to invest funds from scratch.
The end of a romance scam is often sad: The victim begins to doubt his partner’s honesty and realizes that he has become the target of a scam. By the time the victim realizes the situation, they may have lost a significant amount of money.
Russians before removed Four myths about the security of smartphones on Android and iOS.