Metallica, the metal band that rose to fame with its third album in 1986, is attempting to safeguard its crypto-friendly fans against cryptocurrency scams. In April of 2023, the band is scheduled to release 72 Seasons as their eleventh album. The rise in fan activity around the album, has also created opportunities for cyber criminals, who are attempting to trick the band’s fans with scam giveaways and putting them at risk. Fans have also shared related scam posts that were posted on the microblogging site, sniffing for unsuspecting victims.
The band has acknowledged that several people have brought suspicious promises of brand-exclusive crypto giveaways floating on social media to their notice, that propelled them to make a public awareness announcement.
The band took to Twitter to ask its fans to be alert and informed because exposure to malicious links and fake projects could result in the theft of their assets. It clarified that crypto giveaways related to the band’s identities are all scams.
Crypto criminals are swarming to Twitter to hunt for potential victims, a cyber security researcher popularly known as Serpent recently warned.
Chainalysis, in a report two months ago, said that the month of October has been the worst in terms of crypto crimes, with losses of over $718 million (roughly Rs. 5,890 crore) recorded that month.
Following Metallica’s post, its followers highlighted related scam posts that are posted on the micro-blogging site, sniffing for unsuspecting victims.
Every time I’ve gone onto YouTube over the past week I see another fake channel running the same crypto scam. Glad they finally made an official statement, you know there’s some old person out there who thinks it’s legit and sends $8000 in bitcoin to some random address https://t.co/Pl5mtZqTlT
— Mitchell Sanderson (@bigkarto) December 6, 2022
CertiK recently brought to light that scammers have been purchasing cheap identities of real people from the black market to put names and faces on fishy projects to make them look legitimate.
In the backdrop of back-to-back scams, crypto projects are ready to shell out money for developers to spot vulnerabilities in their operations.
Polkadot, for instance, has announced that its community members who participate in keeping its ecosystem safe against vulnerabilities would be rewarded in USD Coin tokens.
Back in August, Ethereum developers quadrupled bug bounty, as high as $1 million (roughly Rs. 8 crore).