By James Oaten
Updated 2 minutes ago

A screenshot of a scam website labelled 'scam alert'.PHOTO: Authorities are warning consumers not to get fleeced by bitcoin scams. (Supplied: Australian Communications and Media Authority)
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After just getting home from an overnight shift, Jason Hall wanted to make a quick bitcoin trade before getting some much-needed rest.

But scammers had manipulated Google search results for his trading site, and within minutes his real account had been hacked and his money was being siphoned off to scammers.

“I just typed [my trading website] into Google and clicked on the link at the top,” Mr Hall of Perth explains.

“I was in a rush, I wanted to make a trade, I saw an opportunity and I wanted to do it quickly before I went to sleep.

“It all went pear-shaped.”

Jason Hall was the victim of a Bitcoin scam.PHOTO: Jason Hall from Perth lost $1,600 when he accidentally logged into a scam website. (Facebook: Jason Hall)
The website Mr Hall logged into is what’s known as a “phishing” scam, where a fake website mimics a legitimate website and steals a user’s account details when they try to log in.

Mr Hall lost $1,600 in the scam.

“It wasn’t until a week later that I got hold of the website support,” Mr Hall said.

“And sure enough, the bitcoin was gone.

“It really shook me up. For the first few hours I didn’t really understand what had happened. I didn’t know if my whole computer had been hacked.”

Scams ‘too good to be true’

Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency that is not owed by any major corporation or government, but by the users in a vast network.

It relies on these users to process and verify transactions in a cryptographic manner.

Interest in the cryptocurrency has surged in recent months, as the value of each bitcoin has boomed from around $1,250 at the start of the year to prices in excess of $9,200.

But with an increase in interest comes an increase in people falling for scams, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is urging consumers to be vigilant.

“If it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” an ACCC spokeswoman said.

The ACCC received 245 reports of bitcoin-related scams in October with loses totalling $92,000.

It issued an alert on Twitter after a surge in scam reports in the final week of the month.

“The scam categories with the most bitcoin-related reports in October were unexpected prize and lottery scams, investment scheme scams and reclaim scams,” an ACCC spokeswomen said.

Scammers getting ‘more sophisticated’

Alex Saunders has been trading cryptocurrencies from Launceston for five years and has seen scams become more sophisticated, including phishing scams, pyramid schemes and websites that tout extraordinary returns.

“When I first started off it was very much dodgy websites just trying to catch people out,” Mr Saunders said.

“Whereas now the hackers and the scammers are definitely getting more sophisticated.”

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Mr Saunders is now heavily active on social media, including running his own YouTube account Nugget’s News, in an effort to help traders navigate the often complex world of cryptocurrencies.

“Don’t try and get rich quick,” Mr Saunders warns.

“You’ve got to do your research. Look into these projects.

“The scammers and the guys that run these projects are aware that people have made a lot of money in this space and unfortunately people are just throwing their money at these projects left, right and centre without doing due diligence.”

But despite the warnings, Mr Saunders said the underlying technology of bitcoin — along with many established trading platforms — was safe.

“There’s a common misconception that bitcoin gets hacked a lot,” Mr Saunders said.

“Bitcoin itself and cryptocurrencies have never been hacked. It’s only the websites and businesses that are built on top of it that tend to get hacked.



http://cryptofundamentals.com.ng/bitcoin-scams-getting-more-sophisticated-as-value-of-cryptocurrency-tops-9200/