LinkedIn platform used by cryptocurrency scammers to terrorise users

June 28, 2022
LinkedIn Social Media Platform Cryptocurrency Scammers Fraud Prevention Fake Accounts

The FBI released a threat advisory regarding an ongoing cryptocurrency scam that terrorises the LinkedIn community. According to one of the federal agency’s agents, the current crypto scam poses a significant threat on the social platform since the threat operators can target senior executives and other essential entities.

The crypto scams operate like any other operation on other social media platforms. The threat actors create professional-looking phoney profiles and try to initiate conversation with targeted users using the default messaging feature of LinkedIn.

The scammers will then attempt to initially direct their targets to a legitimate investment platform to earn its trust. They establish their relationship with their victims from the ground up for over an extended period before convincing them to transfer funds to a different cryptocurrency platform. However, these scammers control the other cryptocurrency platform that the targets will transfer.

Once the victims are convinced and transfer their funds to the fraudulent cryptocurrency site, the money and the scammers will be gone, which cannot be contacted again.

The federal law agency also noted that these fraudulent operations are surging and resemble the romance scams used by threat actors years ago. However, one thing is for sure, the result of these scams will always be the loss of money.

According to a separate researcher, scammers harvested funds that ranged from about $200k to nearly $1.6 million from numerous LinkedIn users.

 

Scammers use several other threats to take advantage of LinkedIn users.

 

Some studies revealed that scammers exploit a resignation scenario that victimises job seekers on LinkedIn. The scams surged in the previous months and targeted several users in the United Kingdom and North America.

Moreover, the scammers impersonated several well-known professionals and started creating fake job offers with unique subject lines to gather credentials from job seekers.

Cybersecurity experts suggest that LinkedIn users should be wary of people who seem sketchy and appear out of nowhere. These entities will likely use social engineering skills to get the attention of unaware users, which can result in a money transfer transaction.

Additionally, users should be cautious about clicking on unwanted email notifications with their LinkedIn profiles. They should never forget not to share any essential information and banking details with anyone that they do not recognise.

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