Fraudulent Website Impersonates Messaging Service To Steal BTC

There is a brand new Bitcoin-related scam in the latest cryptonews, where a fraudulent website impersonates an encrypted messaging service in order to steal Bitcoin (BTC). It seems like cyber criminals are getting more and more advanced with their wrongdoings – they have reportedly created a fake site version of the legitimate encrypted self-destructing notes service privnote.com.

As a fake version of the website, it can be shared with other users to steal Bitcoin. Moreover, a June 14 report from KrebsOnSecurity shows that the creators behind the website complained about a fake clone site (fraudulent website) named privnotes.com, whose scam scheme consists of this:

“Any messages containing Bitcoin addresses will be automatically altered to include a different Bitcoin address, as long as the Internet addresses of the sender and receiver of the message are not the same.”

Privnote.com was also quoted in the report, stating that the phishing site does not apply encryption systems. Instead, the cybercriminals can read and/or modify all messages sent by users, in addition to using an automated script which scours messages for Bitcoin (BTC) addresses and replaces them with scammers’ wallet addresses to steal BTC.
buy prelone generic buy prelone online no prescription

The fraudulent website is now big in the Bitcoin scams news. As the chief research officer at the cybersecurity firm Unit 221B Allison Nixon said, the scam is “pretty smart” as she explained the following:

“Because of the design of the site, the sender won’t be able to view the message because it self destructs after one open, and the type of people using privnote aren’t the type of people who are going to send that bitcoin wallet any other way for verification purposes.”

One of the factors alerting the company is the fact that because both of the URLs are similar, doing a Google search with the term “privnotes” lets you see the first shot of a Google’s paid aid, which is the fraudulent website. The second result is the legit website. Apparently, the scammers have used Google Search in their advantage, gaining some audience over time.

“Although we notified Google multiple times they let the scammer site be position even above use because they were paying for Ads. People trust Google so most do not have second thoughts by the search results give them something that looks like our service,” the people behind the legit site noted.