- Victims are “spudded”, assured of high returns and encouraged to invest
- Then the intruders rob them and run away
- For this, even a semblance of a game with a reward in cryptocurrency is being developed.
Last week, the FBI published new public warning. It says that in the United States, the number of cases of theft of cryptocurrency through fake Play-to-Earn gaming projects has increased.
Recall that such services reward the user for certain actions. The process takes place in the form of a game. For some P2E users, grinding is an additional source of income.
Last year, the popularity of such games was at its peak. Since then, online in P2E projects has declined, but this industry is still in demand among users, especially in the mobile segment.
The FBI warns that Play-to-Earn app scams have skyrocketed:
“First, scammers make contact with a potential victim. Then she is introduced to a game project where you can earn cryptocurrency, for example, for planting and harvesting a virtual crop.”
Then the victim is offered to create a wallet in the application and replenish it in order, for example, to buy seeds for that very farm. Naturally, in the end there is neither income nor the investments that the user has invested.
The timing and specifics of such schemes differ, but the principle remains the same. Fraudsters create fake software (sometimes even with working functionality!), promote it, even pay the first penny income from the “harvest”, after which they accumulate funds and run away.
How to protect yourself from a potential scam?
To minimize the risks when working with a P2E project, it is enough to follow these simple rules:
- create your own wallet and tie it yourself in the application;
- use a third-party blockchain explorer to check the game and the status of its accounts;
- examine the permissions requested by the protocol, revoke suspicious ones;
- do not follow links from the “promoter” of the project.
Unfortunately, this does not give you a complete security guarantee. The choice of projects requiring investments should be approached as deliberately and prudently as possible. And it is better to choose a more popular, albeit less profitable alternative “by ear”. But sometimes this is not enough. Earlier, we talked about how a user became a victim of phishing by downloading seemingly legal software through the Google Ads service.
