A new threat is becoming popular among cryptocurrency market investors. Criminals are diverting funds through a scam that uses fake digital wallet addresses to defraud users during transactions. The alert was released yesterday by the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, through your X account (Twitter).
According to the broker's representative's publications, Experienced investors have already fallen for this scam. This was the case of a crypto system user who, on Tuesday, 1, sent US$ 20 millions to criminals. Nonetheless, when realizing that the address had changed, the investor requested that Binance freeze his transaction to avoid losses.
Zhao decided to warn all his followers about the possible risks. “I want to share this incident (happily) bad happened, but very smart, happened yesterday. Salvei US$ 20 million. I hope this example can also save them one day.”, claimed.
How the crypto scam works?
So that they have access to digital funds, Scammers use addresses similar to their victims' originals. Like this, the fraud consists of generating your own address using the same initial and final characters as an authentic digital wallet.
After this process, the criminal sends his target a small amount transaction. This address ends up being added to the investor's transaction history. Nonetheless, the scam will only happen if the user copies and pastes the fake address without proper verification.
In this way, the transfer ends up going into the wrong hands with a high chance of no recovery of the value. In the end, it is common that, during transactions, some details are never noticed. “Scammers are so smart that they now generate addresses with the same initial and final letters, which is what most people check”, stated the CEO of Binance.
Victims of similar cases
Through interactions in X, other investors reported being victims of the same or similar scam. A user claimed to have lost US$ 20 thousand because, when you noticed the error, there was no longer enough time to request the transaction to be frozen. Coinbase brokerage also claimed to identify similar incidents.
In that case, victims confirmed cases of scams and phishing attacks on the company's services and applications. Users allege that scammers are contacting customers using the domain name of the popular exchange. It is for these reasons that digital security experts do not recommend that wallet addresses be copied and pasted.
The safest way is to fill in the field carefully, checking all send characters. Another way to increase protection is to adopt strong passwords. Furthermore, scams like this can be avoided through a blockchain domain.
