Uphold Warns Of Fake Phishing Scam Seeking Customers’ Private Keys

Crypto exchange Uphold has warned customers that fake emails from scammers posing as the company is trying to fleece users of the keys to their Bitcoin wallets.

“An SMS phishing message was sent to a small number of Uphold customers yesterday encouraging them to link self-custody wallets to a fake Uphold website in return for a “crypto loyalty payment,” wrote the real Uphold company in an email to clients on Wednesday.

The company stressed that the request was “a scam,” and that Uphold will never ask customers to send money to a certain address.

Scam Alert: We've had reports of a phishing message that links to a fake Uphold website, falsely offering a crypto loyalty payment to lure you into connecting a self-custody wallet. This is a scam.

Stay Safe – Remember:

Uphold will never ask you to send money to any address.… pic.twitter.com/aSNfitvRwm

— Uphold (@UpholdInc) February 27, 2024

Phishing scammers are virulent in the world of crypto: according to Chainalysis, $374 million is suspected to have been stolen through approval phishing scams in 2023.

Such scams involve tricking victims into signing a blockchain transaction that gives hackers the ability to move certain tokens within the victim’s crypto wallet. Some victims have lost tens of millions to such scams.

Phishing Scams In Crypto

More standard phishing scams involve tricking victims into sending scammers cryptocurrency through a regular transaction, including through fake investment opportunities, impersonations, and romance scams.

The latter, otherwise known as “pig butchering scams,” stole over $700 million from victims in 2022 across crypto and fiat, according to the FBI’s 2022 IC3 Report. Meanwhile, Americans reported $2.5 billion in losses to crypto investment scams of all kinds.

Crypto can make a strong vehicle for such scams since transactions in cryptocurrencies are peer to peer and irreversible. An intermediary cannot cancel the transaction once made, and scammers are often difficult to identify.

Earlier this week, a scammer hacked into Bitcoin investor MicroStrategy’s X account, successfully stealing $440,000 in ETH from victims in a fake Ethereum token launch announcement.

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