Beware of Telegram Airdrop Fraud ❗️
One easy way to get some free crypto is joining airdrops. A lot of airdrops have a Telegram bot but there are other formats as well. The idea is pretty simple: You do some social tasks (like retweeting a tweet on Twitter) that helps a new project to gain more investors and you'll get some of their cryptotokens in return. It's a win-win scenario.
But there are a lot of shady airdrops out there too and you should be careful. I will show you why.
Scam Airdrops
Creating a new crytocurrency is not that difficult. Well, I couldn't do it but if I would want to I probably could after learning a bit about it. Most "airdropped" coins are running on the Ethereum blockchain and nobody can guarantee you that they will actually become a decent asset in the future.
Is a coin "real" or just a scam? Hard to tell. You could take a look at the website of the project. If you can't find a website or just a low quality page it might be fraud. But some scam coins have a proper site so it would be hard for you to identify the real intention of this coin.
As long as you "just" have to perform some easy social actions and entering your ETH address, you can not lose much but a bit of your time (and maybe privacy). But if airdrops are begging for your assets it gets critical. Is the project still reputable or are they trying to steal your crypto? In most of this cases this is a scam. Let me show you with a recent example.
The deCyberNetwork Fraud
Okay, enough theory. Let's take a look at an example. Currently there is a Telegram bot from "deCyberNetwork" that is trying to steal your ETH. How? Well, at first it seems like a normal airdrop bot. You perform some easy tasks and enter your receive address. But what follows is most likely a fraud.
"Congratulations! You won the deCyberNetwork Protocol Contest. Your prize is 0.88 ETH + airdrop balance instantly.", that sounds great, doesn't it? Almost 1 ETH and my airdrop reward? Great! Just send it 😄 But wait, I have to send 0.004 ETH to verify? No problem, I mean I'll get more back in the end. And your crypto is lost!
Let's take a look at some people that tried to "claim" their reward:
All those accounts send Ethereum to the mentioned address. Some transferred even a lot more like this (did they receive a different bot message?). So everyone of them should have 0.88 ETH + airdrop balance + 0.004 ETH back, right? Because the message stated that "the smart contract will INSTANTLY send your prize ". Let's look at two accounts (red underlined) and see if they received anything.
That's weird. I can't see any rewards, only the outgoing transaction. Well, if that's not enough proof for you take a look at the other address.
No rewards, just like before. And if you take a look at the other addresses you'll see that they haven't received anything as well. Maybe they all just entered a different withdrawal address in the bot but that's pretty unlikely. This is most likely a scam! So please avoid it and don't send any funds. You'll probably lose them!
Conclusion
Joining airdrops is a nice way to get some free crypto. But be careful if some airdrops want to much information or - like in this case - some of your crypto assets. As good as the offer may sound, you most likely will lose your funds for the super small chance to receive something.
So take care and always remember that it's better to be too cautious than too naive.