Introduction
Scams work best when the victims are most vulnerable. What’s a more significant vulnerability than an infatuation with someone special under the premise of love or lust? Tinder, the popular dating app, has faced many kinds of scams. Though these scams are not limited to Tinder, using love is an age- old technique of cheating people.
The crypto ecosystem has been no different.
Luring people with attractive returns is a common scam pulled off by many. Crypto scammers always find creative ways of making unsuspecting people fall into their trap.
The most recent one doing the rounds now is the Tinder Crypto scam. How does this work? Let’s find out!
Read About: Crypto Rug Pulls
The Tinder Crypto scam targets love, trust, and lucrative investments…all at one shot
We’ve been advised to do our due diligence before making any investments. A standard method is always asking the people you trust to narrate their experiences. So, when someone you trust tells you to invest, you are more likely to go ahead with it. This is precisely the vulnerability that Crypto Scammers target.
Gone are the days when crypto scammers used only marketing techniques and prayed for the right victims to find their way in. A more targeted scheme is carried out through the Tinder Crypto scam.
First, they single you out.
Crypto scammers conduct much research to filter out those who will be most vulnerable to a scam of this kind. This means eliminating seasoned crypto investors, finding out the pain points of people looking for love, and approaching only those who would be open to making investments.
Then, they make you feel special.
Any scam that attacks vulnerabilities of love or lust starts with the person making you feel special and wanted. Often referred to as ‘pig butchering,’ this technique is looked at as the phase where the butcher fattens the pig before slaughtering it. Crypto scammers spend months being the “perfect” person to build trust before even bringing up the central part of their scam. During this phase of the social-engineering attack, the crypto scammers often move the conversation from dating apps like Tinder to chat apps with encrypted messaging to avoid being flagged.
Next, they gently introduce crypto conversations.
Maybe they could be talking about their investments, and maybe they share a link. Starting a conversation around crypto is typically the next step in the cycle. This isn’t hard to do, especially with the growing popularity of crypto investments and the much-talked-about high returns. By starting a conversation, crypto scammers understand where you stand, and of course, they already know you’re not an active crypto investor before approaching you.
Finally, they go for the kill.
Once they’ve convinced you that crypto investments are the right choice for you, they put the final act of their Tinder Crypto scam into motion. Here, they offer to walk you through each step of creating an account on a safe crypto exchange. They might also share their crypto wallet details to establish further trust.
They will guide you through the process of making your first crypto purchase and might even ensure you make profits through it. Here, they might take the simple route and ask for crypto transfers citing personal emergencies. However, there are more advanced methods engineered by the scammers that don’t seem as suspicious at the first sight though..
You will be compelled to make seemingly attractive investments.
Crypto scammers often create fake sites or apps and make you set up accounts on these fake sites to steal your investments in one shot. These sites look extremely legitimate and secure because that is how they need to be designed to pull this off. Since your only knowledge about profitable crypto investments comes from this source, you tend to trust them and go ahead with it.
Crypto scammers often use liquidity pools and other technical words and investment instruments to showcase their expertise in the area. However, the underlying smart contract could potentially take away all of your investments without you being able to interfere in time. While things may go smoothly, when you want to withdraw your investments, you might discover that you have been locked out of your account or have to pay a hefty tax to withdraw funds. Customer Service Representatives of these pools are also often a part of the scam and reveal all these hidden charges that deplete your investment rapidly.
Crypto scammers could also use legitimate sites like Uniswap to make you invest in coins controlled by them. In November 2021 a study revealed that 50% of the tokens listed on popular decentralised crypto exchanges were fake and might have names very similar to popular cryptos to confuse novice investors easily. Upon using fake trading applications, the investors are unable to trace their funds, unable to track the destination of their funds, and are not even able to recover them.
How to avoid Tinder Crypto scams?
When you move out from safe crypto exchanges like Zebpay to crypto wallets, there is more exposure to losing your coins to such scams since crypto wallets aren’t very user-friendly for beginners. Simply signing a smart contract from the crypto scammers could make you lose all your investments since crypto wallets enable direct transfers.
Always double-check before investing, even if a close companion recommends it. Some red flags to watch out for in the dating space are always being wary of people who refuse to meet in person, doing a reverse image search for any photos they might share, and encouraging video calls at random times. Be careful even in love, and consider it best to avoid monetary conversations until you have progressed further into the relationship.
Parting Thoughts
Staying vigilant with financial decisions goes a long way in avoiding scams that could make you lose your hard-earned money. Before making investments of any kind, be sure to read up enough and understand the domain for yourself.
Zebpay makes it convenient for all types of investors to learn the basics of crypto investments and make informed decisions before starting their trading journey on the safe crypto exchange – Zebpay. Stay tuned for more!
