Telegram is a common platform used in the crypto space by investors and ICO project members to communicate instantly.
If you are using Telegram, you have to be very careful to follow specific rules as many scammers are trying to get access to your personal information and your funds.
You should never:
- Give personal information on social media (Name, Address, Email, Password, Wallet Address, Private Key, etc.)
- Do any favor to people sending you Direct Message (we naturally want to help people, but over the internet it is dangerous)
- Trust anyone: scammers are manipulation experts.
- Fall for a photo/picture of an attractive girl (it is usually a male behind the computer) or an old/experienced person (looking like a CEO in a suit).
They try to trick you by appealing to your emotions and create a sentiment of experience/trust.
This screenshot is an example of a scammer trying to get your attention.
In this case, they call you with your name (the one that you display on Telegram) to create a sense of friendship.
They then usually send you a message saying that they can't withdraw their funds (a significant sum of money) for some reason and placing themselves as a weak and helpless victim that only YOU can help (similar to the good old Nigerian Prince scam): at this point, you should BLOCK & IGNORE the person immediately.
Note: The BitcoinBlink team (organization or its member) will NEVER send you a DIRECT MESSAGE first EVER!
They are pretty easy to spot once you develop a keen eye for that, but, sometimes you encounter a professional scammer who impersonates an organization or one of its members.
Here is an example, on Twitter, where the creator of Ethereum is impersonated by scammers to get people to send them their funds with the promise of more money: https://icowatchlist.com/blog/vitalik-buterin-impersonator-scams-20000-twitter-users/
Note: they are also creating interaction with the scam post, so people are not too suspicious about the scam going on (they are all fake accounts interacting with the scam post).
Here you can find an example of how an unfortunate person lost money to a scammer: https://imgur.com/a/xCxiufC.