Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Crypto Discussion Forum => Cryptocurrency discussions => Technical Discussion => Topic started by: examplens on April 29, 2024, 12:09:04 PM
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I noticed that I received some kind of airdrops on a Polygon address, although I'm not sure when I applied. It doesn't matter.
Can someone specifically explain what the purpose of these tokens is and why someone does this at all?
I have no intention of dealing with that token, but I see that it was sent to many addresses, I believe that someone will think that they can get something out of there.
The address from which it was sent is labelled as Fake_Phishing3312
(https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/29/rGBpz.png)
If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
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It's phishing if the token ticker is similar to its original (valuable) token that they tried to mimic. If it's only a random ticker or unpopular token, it's just for marketing purposes, kinda like spam with emails or airdrops. The purpose is just "views" so the address owner searches or knows about the token existence. This practice has been common ever since ETH, and then BSC.
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I noticed that I received some kind of airdrops on a Polygon address, although I'm not sure when I applied. It doesn't matter.
Can someone specifically explain what the purpose of these tokens is and why someone does this at all?
I have no intention of dealing with that token, but I see that it was sent to many addresses, I believe that someone will think that they can get something out of there.
The address from which it was sent is labelled as Fake_Phishing3312
(https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/29/rGBpz.png)
If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
I have received some tokens which have URL as their names, something like xxxairdrop.io or whatever.
So , those tokens can also be phising to infect your computer and steal your coins.
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If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
I don't know exactly, but I believe this is one kind of scam attempt. Usually, these scammers use a note for the receivers so you can read it. They send those fake tokens to victims so they check if those coins have value or not and if they can be swapped for USDT or not. Sometimes those scammers provide links to their website so that the victim can visit their website and try to swap the coins. Here is the main part, when victims connect their web3 wallets to their website, these websites drain their entire wallet within a minute. So, you have to be careful when you connect your wallets to a website. Look at the screenshot below that I shared. This is one of my wallets with a bunch of phishing tokens with notes. Basically, they are requesting me to use their website to claim rewards! LOL. In your case, fortunately, someone leveled it as phishing already.
(https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/29/rMcv3.png)
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If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
I don't know exactly, but I believe this is one kind of scam attempt. Usually, these scammers use a note for the receivers so you can read it. They send those fake tokens to victims so they check if those coins have value or not and if they can be swapped for USDT or not. Sometimes those scammers provide links to their website so that the victim can visit their website and try to swap the coins.
If someone newbie who receive such amount on their wallet, they will be probably shocked, excited and be tempted to send the tokens to what exchange its available, then boom, fund wiped.
Well, some newbie have common sense and wary so they are saved on such tricks, DYOR will always save the day.
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If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
Sometimes those scammers provide links to their website so that the victim can visit their website and try to swap the coins. Here is the main part, when victims connect their web3 wallets to their website, these websites drain their entire wallet within a minute.
Yup, this is the most common thing if it's targeted as a scam, you rush to an exchange to cash out and you get fleeced for everything! I wonder how lucrative this thing still is, you have to pay some fees while dropping those tokens and the ones tricked by this are not usually carrying that much in coins in their wallets.
Oh, and there is another kind of spam that is less aggressive where exchanges do this for promotions, just to get you on board, the price of those coins is usually below cents value and even if you sell them you won't be able to cash out since you don't have the minimum withdrawal so from here it goes like this
- not a scam and you deposit a bit to make the quota, the exchange has the fee, and your KYC data
- pure scam and the moment you deposit your money is gone
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Oh, and there is another kind of spam that is less aggressive where exchanges do this for promotions, just to get you on board, the price of those coins is usually below cents value and even if you sell them you won't be able to cash out since you don't have the minimum withdrawal so from here it goes like this
- not a scam and you deposit a bit to make the quota, the exchange has the fee, and your KYC data
- pure scam and the moment you deposit your money is gone
I am not aware of this type of scam attempt BTW. I don't think any reputed exchange will do something like that. Usually, I use DEX to swap and bridge currency that is EVM compatible. But, I also use CEX to exchange coins like Bitcoin. I don't remember receiving any kind of these spammy token CEX wallets. But I know that Binance has dropped some tokens named NFT which have no value. So, I always ignored that token. I mostly use Binance and Kucoin but I didn't received such coins except for the one that I mentioned.
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It's phishing if the token ticker is similar to its original (valuable) token that they tried to mimic. If it's only a random ticker or unpopular token, it's just for marketing purposes, kinda like spam with emails or airdrops. The purpose is just "views" so the address owner searches or knows about the token existence. This practice has been common ever since ETH, and then BSC.
Actually such practice was common on BTC as well. Those spammer/scammer would use either OP_RETURN or multiple addresses and then send dust to your Bitcoin address. But it looks like they stopped doing that due to relative high Bitcoin TX fee.
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I am not aware of this type of scam attempt BTW. I don't think any reputed exchange will do something like that
Reputed,no! Shadier ones, ones that just started, rug pull ones, yeah!
It was more common during the ICO/airdrop madness, I guess it died down because cost versus potential revenue doesn't make it attractive anymore as a promotional method. Plus right now there are so many chains, so many tokens so much stuff I think it's way more beneficial to simply buy your way in the game on social media.
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Reputed,no! Shadier ones, ones that just started, rug pull ones, yeah!
It was more common during the ICO/airdrop madness, I guess it died down because cost versus potential revenue doesn't make it attractive anymore as a promotional method. Plus right now there are so many chains, so many tokens so much stuff I think it's way more beneficial to simply buy your way in the game on social media.
Currently, the airdrops are in hype again. It started only a couple of weeks ago, and if you have followed any of the groups or channels, you will notice how many new projects are launching every day. Twitter is full of spam at this moment. But, you have to engage if you want more updates about these things.
If airdrop hunters start doing the tasks, they do it for every project. A couple of new chains has been launched lately and some new projects on those chains has been launched as well. But fortunately, I haven't been in those scammy projects yet and I hope I won't fall for those scams.
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I have been receiving those types of airdrops in my wallet not on Polygon, but with BASE chain. I think it's just because it's easy to create new projects and then make meme coins or something that would be distributed to all NFT holders or something.
I have traded only once that I received and traded it, nothing happened to my account though.
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Sometimes those scammers provide links to their website so that the victim can visit their website and try to swap the coins. Here is the main part, when victims connect their web3 wallets to their website, these websites drain their entire wallet within a minute.
This is actually already a popular scam method which victimized many in the past and that's why it is good never to touch something like that otherwise your wallet will be zero in no time at all. I once read horrifying stories along this scam strategy and in many cases those who are new in crypto industry can easily be deceived as who would not want to receive something for free even if the value can just be $10. This was popular in both ETH and BSC network and until now I still see some tokens and coins coming my way without me knowing where they really come from. In Twitter or X, airdrops is always popular but I am careful in there as we don't know if they are still employing the same scam way to victimize people. We are certainly living in the good and the bad of the cryptocurrency industry and categorizing which can be a little bit challenging.
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I have dozens of these scam tokens in my wallet on the Binance network. If you put your wallet address on the X platform or sign up for Airdrop, you will receive dozens of these scam tokens.
In addition to everything mentioned above, some of these tokens give a large fictitious value to the token, and when someone tries to sell it, he must do an approval first, and this requires high fees ranging between $4-10, while it usually does not exceed cents. These fees will go to the wallet of The creator of the token, therefore, the more he publishes these tokens, the more he earns thousands of dollars through fees alone. Of course, the victim will not be able to sell the token because it is a scam.
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If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
I don't know exactly, but I believe this is one kind of scam attempt. Usually, these scammers use a note for the receivers so you can read it. They send those fake tokens to victims so they check if those coins have value or not and if they can be swapped for USDT or not. Sometimes those scammers provide links to their website so that the victim can visit their website and try to swap the coins.
If someone newbie who receive such amount on their wallet, they will be probably shocked, excited and be tempted to send the tokens to what exchange its available, then boom, fund wiped.
Well, some newbie have common sense and wary so they are saved on such tricks, DYOR will always save the day.
I agree. Newbies must be guided with this kind of stuff to avoid losing funds. Scammers in crypto keeps improving to lure anyone. I have a friend who has been in crypto for years and always taking care of his actions every time he transfer funds but still being victim of scamming or hacking. Maybe his computer is infected by clicking suspicious links, so DYOR is must and don't always rely on the knowledge of a friend.
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Well, I have been spreading awareness everywhere about phishing; unfortunately, I was the victim last night when an email was phished at midnight, and I did not have access to my desktop or laptop. I did not doubt the email because it was exclusively for airdrop farming. Since I was on my mobile, I did not check that email's URL and sender. I clicked on the link and went ahead and connected the metamask wallet. It takes only a few seconds to drain my entire wallet. Fortunately, The contract did not drain all the chains. The blast and Arbitrum chains were drained, and the ETH and Avalance chains weren't affected.
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I have received some tokens which have URL as their names, something like xxxairdrop.io or whatever.
So , those tokens can also be phising to infect your computer and steal your coins.
I have nothing to do with tokens, but if someone had told me that a phishing attack could be attempted in this way, I would probably have thought that it couldn't be true. However, scammers are obviously becoming more and more inventive in their intention to get hold of anything of value.
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I noticed that I received some kind of airdrops on a Polygon address, although I'm not sure when I applied. It doesn't matter.
Can someone specifically explain what the purpose of these tokens is and why someone does this at all?
I have no intention of dealing with that token, but I see that it was sent to many addresses, I believe that someone will think that they can get something out of there.
The address from which it was sent is labelled as Fake_Phishing3312
(https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/29/rGBpz.png)
If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?
I witnessed same things when I swapped a token I received from bounty and whenever I do a swap from one network to another, their goal is to get you associates wallet to their fake site where they seems someone can swap the token with this your wallet would be emptied. And for newbies especially airdrops hunters are easily caught up at this moment since they would think is a free token and they could swap for a better token without them knowing it's a fake one and a trap for that matter.
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Well, I have been spreading awareness everywhere about phishing; unfortunately, I was the victim last night when an email was phished at midnight, and I did not have access to my desktop or laptop. I did not doubt the email because it was exclusively for airdrop farming. Since I was on my mobile, I did not check that email's URL and sender. I clicked on the link and went ahead and connected the metamask wallet. It takes only a few seconds to drain my entire wallet. Fortunately, The contract did not drain all the chains. The blast and Arbitrum chains were drained, and the ETH and Avalance chains weren't affected.
Sorry for your loss. Everyone can make a mistake.
I avoid keeping more than a few bucks on my mobile wallets. At most the price of the phone (my personal limit)
I don't have metamask in my mobile, just in my desktop. Maybe it is a good practice, to avoid interacting with smartcontracts in the phone
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I have a lot of these on my active wallets. I stopped participating in airdrops and altcoins bounty, but I still get a lot of these tokens. It's just good that Ethereum and Binance have marked these tokens as spam, so you will get a warning and not fall into trading them to the fake trading platform. Since this is only on a view, it's safe unless you add it to the contract address, which you should not.
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I agree. Newbies must be guided with this kind of stuff to avoid losing funds. Scammers in crypto keeps improving to lure anyone. I have a friend who has been in crypto for years and always taking care of his actions every time he transfer funds but still being victim of scamming or hacking. Maybe his computer is infected by clicking suspicious links, so DYOR is must and don't always rely on the knowledge of a friend.
That's right, with guidance there will be no complaints of newcomers losing funds in crypto, education for the sake of education about crypto must also be improved because as we know crypto has become global and almost all young people play in crypto
and keep in mind that crypto crime is very subtle, without us realizing it, with one click the assets can be lost without a trace
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I agree. Newbies must be guided with this kind of stuff to avoid losing funds. Scammers in crypto keeps improving to lure anyone. I have a friend who has been in crypto for years and always taking care of his actions every time he transfer funds but still being victim of scamming or hacking. Maybe his computer is infected by clicking suspicious links, so DYOR is must and don't always rely on the knowledge of a friend.
That's right, with guidance there will be no complaints of newcomers losing funds in crypto, education for the sake of education about crypto must also be improved because as we know crypto has become global and almost all young people play in crypto
and keep in mind that crypto crime is very subtle, without us realizing it, with one click the assets can be lost without a trace
That's true. The problem is there's no physical education out there for crypto. Mostly we can found it online, offering a lesson for crypto but people think it's a waste of money that's why they decided to enter directly in the crypto without knowing how risky is it especially if you're going to invest with big money. If I have a friend who really want to invest in crypto I will guide him to avoid losing funds.
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As there are no free money in cryptocurrency, the only goal of such worthless tokens is to scam address owner. Starting from being imitators of original tokens, and ending with redirecting (not directly but through search) to phishing pages. The worst part of it is that blockchain explorer somehow show value of such tokens. For example on one of my addresses there are tokens that are $100 worth, they are traded on dex and their value is around few cents, but if I google where they are traded, search can lead me to anywhere.
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I have nothing to do with tokens, but if someone had told me that a phishing attack could be attempted in this way, I would probably have thought that it couldn't be true. However, scammers are obviously becoming more and more inventive in their intention to get hold of anything of value.
Scammers are just normal people like ever other people but they think ahead of everyone, anywhere there is money, they check critical ways where it's vulnerable and they take advantage of it. Sending of coins used to be a thing when new coins want to airdrop money to people for free task or even free but scammers found a way to turn it to wallet poisoning.
This attempt is mere tweaking of smart contract and the person must understand solidity before they can code something like that, a mere interaction with any coin they send for you, once you click the bait and swap, your tokens is gone.
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As there are no free money in cryptocurrency
I think the only place in the world where you can find free money is in crypto.
There has been a lot of opportunities of free money in the past. Airdrops which were worth thousands, bitcoin forks, etc...
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Here's a crazy case of a dust attack that ended at the mercy of the hacker who returned the funds.
The purpose was to create confusion in the history of transactions with similar addresses, which ultimately led to the confusion of the victim who sent coins to the wrong address.
https://cryptopotato.com/71m-wbtc-dusting-attack-victim-recovers-stolen-loot/
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Here's a crazy case of a dust attack that ended at the mercy of the hacker who returned the funds.
The purpose was to create confusion in the history of transactions with similar addresses, which ultimately led to the confusion of the victim who sent coins to the wrong address.
https://cryptopotato.com/71m-wbtc-dusting-attack-victim-recovers-stolen-loot/
It wasn't mercy. The hacker received 10% of them funds, millions... and now he is "clean" I guess.
The victim first reached out to the scammer on May 5, offering a 10% in return for the stolen funds. In cooperation with blockchain cybersecurity firm Match Systems and crypto exchange Cryptex, the victim threatened to trace the funds if the attacker failed to respond by May 6.
....
Meanwhile, the worth of the returned assets hovers around $66.8 million because ether has declined more than BTC in the past week. Data from CoinMarketCap shows ETH fell over 6.4% while BTC slumped roughly 2.8% within the same time frame.
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Here's a crazy case of a dust attack that ended at the mercy of the hacker who returned the funds.
The purpose was to create confusion in the history of transactions with similar addresses, which ultimately led to the confusion of the victim who sent coins to the wrong address.
https://cryptopotato.com/71m-wbtc-dusting-attack-victim-recovers-stolen-loot/
That's why you're not supposed to fetch addresses to pay using the transaction history. Many wallets have an address book specifically for that purpose. For example, Electrum has such a feature.
But of course, if the problem comes from the likeness of addresses on different networks, well then it's much harder to detect, really. Except I guess for only using one wallet per network.
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It wasn't mercy. The hacker received 10% of them funds, millions... and now he is "clean" I guess.
There was an offer of 10%, but there are no details from the conversation between the victim and the hacker. It is certainly a mercy that he agreed to return the money without any investigation.
That's why you're not supposed to fetch addresses to pay using the transaction history. Many wallets have an address book specifically for that purpose. For example, Electrum has such a feature.
But of course, if the problem comes from the likeness of addresses on different networks, well then it's much harder to detect, really. Except I guess for only using one wallet per network.
Honestly, this seems quite sophisticated to me, it would never occur to me to come up with such a method. Maybe because I don't think about how to steal someone's money.
Nevertheless, a banal mistake like sending to the wrong address due to similarity, and the amount involved is $70 million... It is quite irresponsible of this person to make such a transaction.
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As there are no free money in cryptocurrency
I think the only place in the world where you can find free money is in crypto.
There has been a lot of opportunities of free money in the past. Airdrops which were worth thousands, bitcoin forks, etc...
You have said it - in the past. In the past we did not have such massive token spams on addresses. If we were talking about past, then I would agree that it was much easier to get something for free in crypto. If I get something for free in crypto today, I would be very suspicious of that.
But to be honest, I dont know 100% correct answer for topic question. I have address that are empty and never been flashed anywhere, and even they receive trash from time to time. If this was some kind of an attack on me, then there is no point of that, because addresses are empty. I can assume that this is a long term strategy and maybe they would play that joker card (token spam) in future against me. Glad that so far they did not catch me and scam me.
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Sorry for your loss. Everyone can make a mistake.
I avoid keeping more than a few bucks on my mobile wallets. At most the price of the phone (my personal limit)
I don't have metamask in my mobile, just in my desktop. Maybe it is a good practice, to avoid interacting with smartcontracts in the phone
Usually, I don't keep my crypto on Metamask, but as you may know, sometimes projects offer something good. As you may know, there is a new ETH layer2 blockchain named Blast and their website is blast.io, they are offering something good. All you have to do is hold ETH on the Blast network and connect your wallet to their website. It will generate some points that will later convert into their native tokens. So, I was farming their airdrops with this wallet, and the scammer stole all my ETH on that chain. But, never mind. I revoked the connection, and all other networks except Blast and Arbitrum were safe.
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Usually, I don't keep my crypto on Metamask, but as you may know, sometimes projects offer something good. As you may know, there is a new ETH layer2 blockchain named Blast and their website is blast.io, they are offering something good. All you have to do is hold ETH on the Blast network and connect your wallet to their website. It will generate some points that will later convert into their native tokens. So, I was farming their airdrops with this wallet, and the scammer stole all my ETH on that chain. But, never mind. I revoked the connection, and all other networks except Blast and Arbitrum were safe.
I'm sorry for your loss, I hope it's not a significant amount, but I wouldn't blame Metamask for it. I learned a similar expensive lesson earlier, after that only Metamask + hardware (Trezor) wallet.
All airdrops where I have to hold ETH on some network are risky for me and that's an additional reason why I don't want to consider them.
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Usually, I don't keep my crypto on Metamask, but as you may know, sometimes projects offer something good. As you may know, there is a new ETH layer2 blockchain named Blast and their website is blast.io, they are offering something good. All you have to do is hold ETH on the Blast network and connect your wallet to their website. It will generate some points that will later convert into their native tokens. So, I was farming their airdrops with this wallet, and the scammer stole all my ETH on that chain. But, never mind. I revoked the connection, and all other networks except Blast and Arbitrum were safe.
I'm sorry for your loss, I hope it's not a significant amount, but I wouldn't blame Metamask for it. I learned a similar expensive lesson earlier, after that only Metamask + hardware (Trezor) wallet.
All airdrops where I have to hold ETH on some network are risky for me and that's an additional reason why I don't want to consider them.
Airdrops now require that you interact a lot with smartcontracts.
Stake high amounts, high swap volumes etc... you spend lots of money doing those tasks for an unknown airdrop value
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Airdrops now require that you interact a lot with smartcontracts.
Stake high amounts, high swap volumes etc... you spend lots of money doing those tasks for an unknown airdrop value
Well, testnet airdrop tasks require you to cost nothing but your time only by testing their platform. I prefer to participate in the testnet airdrops because they cost only testnet tokens. If it's a Layer 2 blockchain, then most of them require me to spend some gas fees on sepia, base, or other testnet ETH to participate in their test net. Some testnet requires tBTC to participate in their testnet.
As for staking and swapping volumes, yeah. Some platforms offer airdrops like that, but they are already on the mainnet. I do not prefer participating in such airdrops. But if a platform does not require staking but just holding an amount on a specific chain, then it's an awesome opportunity, right? The latest ETH layer two blockchains, Blast.io, is offering something good.
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Airdrops now require that you interact a lot with smartcontracts.
Stake high amounts, high swap volumes etc... you spend lots of money doing those tasks for an unknown airdrop value
Well, testnet airdrop tasks require you to cost nothing but your time only by testing their platform. I prefer to participate in the testnet airdrops because they cost only testnet tokens. If it's a Layer 2 blockchain, then most of them require me to spend some gas fees on sepia, base, or other testnet ETH to participate in their test net. Some testnet requires tBTC to participate in their testnet.
As for staking and swapping volumes, yeah. Some platforms offer airdrops like that, but they are already on the mainnet. I do not prefer participating in such airdrops. But if a platform does not require staking but just holding an amount on a specific chain, then it's an awesome opportunity, right? The latest ETH layer two blockchains, Blast.io, is offering something good.
Testnets most of the time would be needing up some testnet gas which you could make use of Ex. Sepolia ETH if we are really that basing up on erc20 type projects
and so forth. The thing i do skip out on dealing with those airdrops is on the time that you would be making some tx volume on the network on which it is really needing up some
gas on which it would really be still that costly if you do ask me. So its not really that not all would really be able to freely join up these drops due to this kind of
arrangement on which it turns out that you would be still needing to invest or put up some funds for gas fees.