Here Are The Ways To Check If A Bitcoin Address Is A Scam

Keep Scammers Away

There are easy ways to check if the bitcoin address has reported as being used by scammers with the rapid rise in the number of bitcoin scams such as in fake bitcoin giveaways. It is also easy to report any bitcoin address associated with a scam. 

Check the ‘Bitcoin Abuse’ Database

As it is found that it is rapidly rising and the number of bitcoin scams where many of them ask people to send bitcoin to the addresses they provide, such as bitcoin giveaway scams promising to double the amount of bitcoin you send. For example, the great twitter hack last week had many high-profile accounts tweeting about fake bitcoin giveaways. 

You can check to see if that address has been reported as one being used in a scam before sending your bitcoin to an address. A popular website with a public database of bitcoin addresses used by hackers and criminals is Bitcoin Abuse. Here you can look up the bitcoin address, report a scam address, and monitor addresses reported by others. 

The site will display information such as the number of times the address has been reported, the last report date and time, the total amount of bitcoin it has recovered as well as the number of transactions if the bitcoin address you are searching on the site has been reported by others. To track the transactions for the address, there will also be a link to Blockchain.info, as the site displays all reports filed on the address. 

It is also found that Bitcoin Abuse provides some statistics on the number of bitcoin scams reported. There have been 156 reports in the last day, 989 in the last week, and 4,112 in the last month at the press time. 

Check With ‘Scam Alert’

You can easily look up a bitcoin address on another website called Scam Alert that is recently launched platform creating the blockchain tracking and analytics provider Whale Alert as the site further explains its mission to be making blockchain safer to use for everyone by exposing scammers and other criminals abusing it. They encourage users to report scams, thefts, and fraudulent websites involving any blockchain or cryptocurrency. 

The site when inputting an address that has been reported as one used by scammers pops up the message that reads “Confirmed scam… this address is then confirmed by Scam Alert as a scam. Do not send any payments to the address.”

On the address, you can also view the scam report showing information such as a description of the scam, any associated websites, the number of times it has been reported, as also the lifetime earnings of the address in the US dollars. 

It is observed that useful information about different types of crypto scams, such as sextortion, ransomware, Ponzi schemes, giveaways, dark web, and theft are provided by the Scam Alert website. Along with these it also provides basic scam prevention advice such as don’t trust anyone and verify. The most successful scams based on funds recovered are the Ponzi schemes, fake exchanges, and fake bitcoin giveaways as the site list the top 10 scam addresses. 

Where Are The Scammers Headed?

There are plenty of bitcoin scams on YouTube also particularly fake giveaways both in videos and ads where scammers claim famous people are giving away bitcoin such as SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, also Virgin Galactic chairman Chamath Palihapitiya, and finally Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. One of the most successful bitcoin scams having raked in millions of dollars was the fake Elon Musk BTC giveaway. 

Whale Alert has hereby reported on July 10 that it has been able to confirm 38 million US dollar in bitcoin alone stolen by the scammers over the past 4 years before last week’s twitter hack excluding Ponzi schemes that are a billion-dollar industry on their own as 24 million of these was during the first 6 months of 2020. 

The Final Words

The ultimatum is that many other schemes are aimed at tricking you to send them your bitcoin. According to the news.Bitcoin.com, it also includes Bitcoin Trader, Bitcoin Revolution, Bitcoin Evolution, Moon Bitcoin Live, Bitcoin Loophole, Bitcoin Superstar, and Bitcoin Era. There comes to be plenty of bitcoin email scams where many of them may look legit, well-ranked by Google with paid reviews on legitimate websites similar to the Associated Press, as you are however not likely to see any bitcoin returned if you send them your coins. It was found that one of the scams even leaked personal data of 250,000 people from 20 countries. So here take caution and research before sending bitcoin to anyone.