Binance Warns Crypto Investors: Massive SMS Scam
Binance Warns Crypto Investors: Massive SMS Scam
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has warned investors about SMS phishing scams. The scammers were sending messages that a withdrawal request was made from an unknown IP address and suggesting that we can cancel it.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, tweeted that there was an “SMS scam with a payout cancellation link. The link leads to a phishing page that collects our credentials as in the screenshot below”:
According to the head of Binance, the scammers were sending SMS messages to cryptocurrency investors. They reported that someone wanted to make a withdrawal from an unknown IP address from our account. Then they asked the investors to click on the indicated link to cancel the withdrawal request. Unaware users may have fallen for the belief that someone is trying to withdraw funds from their account. Then, by providing the appropriate data, they actually passed the logins and passwords to the scammers – and then their money was stolen.
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Zhao stressed not to click on links from SMS. Binance does not simply send out such links – we always only get access tokens to use, for example when logging in.
Binance is not the only exchange that has been recently targeted by scammers. In August last year, Nasdaq-listed Coinbase reported a similar phishing attack.
In the case of Coinbase, the attack was a little different. The user received an SMS saying: “New login. Right? Disable – here is the URL”. There were also messages that we received some funds in the form of a BTC transaction and need to verify the transaction.
See: NFT
Analytics platform Chainalysis revealed that fraudsters amassed a total of $14 billion in cryptocurrency last year using various attacks and extortions. The company noted that Hindus are the most likely victims, who visited crypto-scam sites nearly 10 million times last year.