Scams seem to be everywhere today and crypto land is not an exception. With the recent surge of interest in NFT’s, cryptocurrencies, criminals are finding new ways to scam users out of their hard-earned money.

The crypto space is full of opportunities and risks and scammers are actively targeting this space. In addition to fake groups on Telegram, we also spotted a few scam websites using our name to scam users.

Most of these scam websites have also used the identity of reputed organizations and have created fake pages to fool users. We also came across this website that was offering early access to users to buy the POC.

Warning signs of a scam

The ‘Squid Game’ crypto scam shocked the crypto world.

The token developers (scamsters) did a rug pull due to which the token value crashed to zero from its rise of 3000% which was achieved over a span of 3 days!

When the token was initially introduced, there were a range of red flags which were ignored by investors and hence all of them got duped.

Look out for warning signs of what may appear to you as a fraud or a scam. In the crypto space, any reputed organization will have their official channels. Be it social media, website or messaging platforms like Telegram, Discord or Signal.

“Scammers usually target an organization’s communication channels, try to replicate them by creating fake profiles and target users to join these channels.”

If you are added to groups who pose themselves as an organization, there are high chances that it’s a scammer targeting you and this is a warning sign.

Even a person contacting you via DM posing as a company representative, is a major red flag.

Identify a scam and report it

Keeping the promotional aspect of marketing out of this discussion, no organization will contact you first or add you to groups.

At the time of writing this, Pocket Arena has over 18k followers on Twitter and over 10k users on Telegram. None of these users were invited by Pocket Arena admins to join these channels. Our growth is organic and happens through word of mouth, and pure marketing efforts.

But not all community building efforts are considered scams. As complex the work of scamsters may seem, it’s relatively easy to spot and identify a scam.

This can be done by going to the source and verifying the authenticity of any information or update you have come across. As mentioned earlier, scammers replicate organizations and brand names. So a simple Google search will provide you with the data required like Website, social media and customer support channels.

Done merely go on the SSL certificate of the website. Ensure the company website is correct or error free. For example, scammers often trick users by changing an alphabet in the scam website’s domain name. For example, Google.com is different from G0ogle.com

Take Away’s

As an organization operating in the crypto space, it becomes our responsibility to shield our users from scamsters. We figured the best way to do this is to inform users of the official communication channels. In the case of Pocket Arena, we have created a single source, with link.tree, where everything that is official about Pocket Arena is listed there.

We have also periodically notified our users via social media to exercise caution while dealing with scamsters.

Going forward we would like to inform users that if you spot something suspicious, kindly flag it to relevant customer support teams to verify if the message is valid or a fraud.