thecoinrepublic.com
- Be cautious of using a search engine to find the crypto site for login
- Scammers are making a mirror image of the site to dupe the users
- Users usually log into the fake site, giving all the information to the scammers
- One of the victims have lost $3,00,000 in Ethereum
Cryptocurrency investors in Toronto are becoming vulnerable to the increasing number of phishing scams in the country. The Toronto Police have warned the investors of the ongoing phishing scams that have defrauded victims out of several thousand.
As per the police statement, the fraudsters are using fake sites to carry out the scam when people who store their cryptocurrency on the online platform, use the search engine to find the site and login.
The search result shows multiple sites and the top result is sponsored with an advertisement for a site that looks genuine. However, the picture painted here is different. It is a mirror image of the actual cryptocurrency exchange page. The fake page is designed in such a manner that when a user puts his login and password details, it will give the charge to the scammers.
The users will not be able to log in to their accounts and while trying to recover it, the user may enter the answer to their private account recovery question. All this information is then shared with the scammers and the users’ cryptocurrency are then transferred from their accounts to the third party and further.
One of the victims who pray fall to such a scam shared his experience and said that he is well versed in cryptocurrency and has been investing in it for over five years now. He was aware of the risks involved in cryptocurrency and how information could be compromised well enough not to fall for a scam.
Even though he knew everything, he lost over $ 300,000 worth of Ethereum on July 13th when he accidentally went to a cloned site rather than the actual site. When he log into his wallet, he received a message that a regular firmware update requires your password to proceed.
His currency was gone in an instant and the scammers sent the money from his account to another one and eventually moved it to 12 other accounts, making it extremely difficult to track. According to him, the only trail that may help him to recover his lost currency were only the address codes and on following them, he discovered that they were linked to accounts in Eastern Europe.
He has reported the incident to the police. But he believes that the search engines should be liable as it is possible to pay to have certain sites show up as top searches on them. The police are warning people to be extra careful when it comes to protecting their cryptocurrency investments. Since cryptocurrency is not regulated and is decentralized, it is extremely challenging to recover these assets.