The coronavirus situation has more people at home, meaning more targets for scammers.

You know how it goes, if you're in crypto circles on Twitter there's no way you haven't seen it dozens of times before - "Send in $100 worth of <whatever coin> and recieve 10X that amount back!" coming from accounts that look like those of CoinBase, Vitalik, CZ, even Elon Musk famously had to speak up because so many scammers pretended to be him doing an ETH giveaway.

Sadly, when we covered the story of Elon Musk we discovered the scammers wallet address had a shocking  $179,284 worth of ETH sitting in it.

Just out of curiosity, within the last 3 months I checked the wallet addresses given out by scammers on Twitter a couple times - both were empty, it seems Twitter was drying up for scammers.  They needed something new, and it seems they found it.

Old scam finds new victims at YouTube...

YouTube gives live streams priority on search results, so there's a good chance you'll see these scams running right now by searching for bitcoin, cryptocurrency, etc. This also sends newbies searching for videos to learn more about crypto right into scammers hands.

Here they’re able to add one extra twist that makes things a bit more believable - when you click on the live stream you'll see a real (old, recorded) interview with a well known crypto personality, and text on the screen makes victims think they just missed the announcement of a giveway.

Here's some streams that were live at the time of writing this: 




There's a good chance they're using bots to inflate the numbers, but seeing 1000-10,000 people 'watching now' adds even another layer of believeability.

What can we do about it?

Typically, articles like this need to end with some rambling where I tell people to 'be smart' and to verify things before they do it, etc. 

But let's be honest here, the scam makes no sense from the start, no matter how flashy the packaging. It's not like they're saying it's a lotto and they need to send money to get their ticket for a chance to win - they say everyone who sends money will get more money back. If everyone gets free money there's no logical reason why that requires anyone sending anything.

The people falling for this are the kind who have to learn the hard way.  The only advice I can give is to warn any friends who fit this description.

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Author: Ross Davis
E-Mail: Ross@GlobalCryptoPress.com Twitter:@RossFM
San Francisco News Desk

Some tricks used to get the customer service rep from the cell phone company to comply include pretending to be someones personal assistant, which would explain why you may not be able to answer every question they ask you.

Or, pretend to be elderly, make every step take way longer than usual, make the customer service rep frustrated and by the time they figure out what you need them to do, they'll rush to get you off the line.

Who's to blame?

Absolutely, it's the cellphone providers.  In almost every case a rep from the company doesn't go through the process of verifying they are talking to the true account owner, or, as mentioned above when they believe they're speaking with someone's personal assistant, they will forgive not knowing things like the mothers maiden name.

The solution? This can be tough, because sometimes we forget what we chose as our passwords or pins. I've never had to do this process myself, and I have no idea what answers I gave to the security questions when I signed up... 8 years ago now.

But frankly, if I forgot, it's my fault.  So perhaps a foolproof system where the customer service reps cannot change SIM information without first entering information given by the customer is the way to go. 

If they forgot, a verification code will have to be mailed to the customer's home address. It could be sent overnight (for a fee) and people will have to accept this is being done in the name of protecting their data.

These days, so much of our lives are on our phones.  It's a change that happened without much thought behind it, but most people don't feel like losing their phone is the same as losing their wallet with their credit cards in it.  But really, it's exactly like that.

Could someone call a bank and get someone else's login information by saying they are their personal assistant? Would the bank reps forgive not knowing a few pieces of personal information? Hell no.

Now keep in mind, through someones cellphone you can access that same account! That's why cellphone providers need to operate with the same security standards as the bank.