Bit coin

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Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

Recently I have been getting “blackmail” scams in my active baiting accounts. I know nothing about Bitcoin except it’s a cryptocurrency. The emails give no reply address, so they are impossible to bait. So I post them on scamwarners.

I am just curious about bitcoin. Does anyone know any more than me?

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 7:11 pm

You can likely find a dozen people in here that know more about it than me, but feel free to pm if it's basic information you seek.

When my place of work has servers hacked to do mining, it's all Monero, which I'm being told by national intelligence is where its at for anonymous transactions.

And yes, it is rather difficult to bait a bitcoinwallet... You can however check how succesful they are in their attempts by looking up the wallets.

It's just an attempt to get you to wire money to people you are afraid of. And as you most likely know the "you have been watching porn, and we have your recording, and will publish it unless you pay" is very rarely backed up by any videos.

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 7:21 pm

This is the "simple" explanation of bitcoin from Bitcoin's own website https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works

As Jason said, the scammer is just hoping that a few of the people he is emailing panic and send the coin to him. He has no videos and isn't a hacker, he's just an opportunist thief who is usually just sending his script to the same scammer email lists that get AFF mails. Although there seem to be some cases where the address is linked to an actual real password. In these cases, the email and password will have come from one of the many password dumps that have been created from hacks like Target, Yahoo, etc - but there is still no video, it's just a bit scarier for the recipient as it has an actual email/password combination they know is their's.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

I am guessing LE is probably all over bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. I know I would be.

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 6:02 am

^^I doubt it. I remember seeing something on TV where some guy put a few grand into bitcoin. He waited until the price when up and became a bitcoin millionaire. Something like that anyway.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3877

well, you don't need to know much about bitcoin.

what's important for baiting: there are addresses in bitcoin, long rows of numbers and letters (25 or so).

essentially, you can play it the same way as any other scam, claim that you have been contacted by his boss, who provided you with another bitcoin address, or you had a typo in the address, or whatever.

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 9:03 am

^^^ Except that in this case, there is no email address to reply to the scammer on as he has likely sent it from a spoofed, hacked or throwaway address and isn't interested in hearing from his victims. He just hopes that some will panic enough to send him the bitcoin.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3877

well, if it is just a "send money, or something happens" mail, then it's of course unbaitable.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2003 Posts: 4747

yeah, that's my "dilemma", an odd thing is now I am getting paypal phish emails. I wonder if the mugu figured out they can't go the normal rout. don't worry he try again, they always try again. till then I have my other accounts.

the next should be good, don't you love it when the mugus are desperate? Laughing

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 357

What you're getting is just part of a different scam format...on the bitcoin one, the wallet address they give you is all that matters, because they have that address and can move funds to and from it(if you want to see if anyone has fallen for the scam the blockchain is public so you can see all the transactions to and from that address).
Anyway, the premise is that the email is supposed to be convincing enough to trick you into paying like b8er said(they have articles about this kind of scam on Sophos naked security and krebsonsecurity if you're interested).
In theory, this makes the attacker much more difficult to trace, but certainly not impossible if one were so inclined. But of course, that's beyond the scope of what they do here, and more than mildly against the law, so no need getting into that. Wink

Anyhoo, if you're interested in security at all or security related scams check out those sites I mentioned and you'll find lots of interesting reads.