Scammers promoting fake “giveaways” managed to steal 8,148 Ethereum worth about $4.3 million from unsuspecting users, according to statistical data from EtherscamDB.
The EtherscamDB database was created by the team behind the MyCrypto wallet to track the various types of scams surrounding the Ethereum platform. In recent months, the site has recorded various types of scams, such as classic phishing sites that pretend to be some of the most famous wallets, exchange sites, or even giveaways that first ask for some kind of deposit from the user.
The latter category has been promoted quite a bit on Twitter lately, and on a daily basis some of the most popular tweets are related to scams of this type, such as “Ether giveaway” scams.
More specifically, this trend increased significantly in February, when an aspiring scammer made $5,000 in a day by impersonating big names on Twitter like Elon Musk, John McAfee, and others. Since then, such scams have flooded the platform. Fake accounts with names similar to those of public figures, with misleading messages, ask users to send an amount of Ethereum in order to enter a lottery.
According to the database maintained by EtherscamDB, a total of 8,148 Ethereum (worth $4.3 million) have been sent to just the 468 Ethereum addresses it tracks. The amount is certainly higher as the site does not track all giveaway scams, but even so, the statistics show how big the problem is.
Twitter, for its part, is slow to respond, in some cases letting such campaigns run for days or even weeks before they are “taken down.” Perhaps this is why it is a favorite platform for scammers.
