How i got scammed with an fake sps airdrop from telegram
Original post can be found on peakd.com
Disclaimer: What happened has nothing to with the real Splinterlands. And always double check everything!
What Happened?
I like to follow and read as much as a can about crypto, its usages, roadmaps, etc. And one of the things a put interest in halve way 2021 where airdrops. If you've ever looked into airdrops from crypto projects, you will notice that most of the communication between the project and its followers will be something like Discord or Telegram. This is where most of the updates around a project will be shared, leaving more conventional media like mail or the projects website excluded from updates. Also every project / website etc has its own channels that you need to be in.
Hence why i didn't notice the scam at first glance. I received a notification regarding an SPS airdrop. I should have check from which channel the notification came, but i didn't take my time to do so.
The notification looked convincing enough to be clicked on, leading to the following website : dapp-airdrop.com/splinterlands. (if you now go to this specific url, you will get a page not found, but the main site is still in the air, now claiming to have an Space crypto airdrop. So pay real close attention to links pointing at that domain, that is what i should have done in the first place. And pay a lot of attention if you try to get into airdrops.
As you can see, there is always an counter near its ending time, making you feel like you need to hurry and click on the airdrop. Once clicked (fault number 2) it will connect with metamask and ask for transaction confirmation. Once you accept this, it will try to transfer a particular asset. During this it will display a message that it is trying to connect to your wallet, keeping you focused on the message, instead of your wallet.
Once you think there is something fishy going on, and check your wallet, you will see that it transferred you assets to this adress: 0x83554106EaEdC139AA5e05F7D846A1828AE0274a (you can check the wallet on bscscan.com). As you can see on bscscan, these folks are scamming a lot of people, so make sure you are not one them. Always double / triple check everything, and always remember that there are people after your crypto!
A titan transaction of nearly $3k in the scammers wallet.
Lessons learned
With the bad also comes something good. I have been taught a wise lesson (again) to never do things in a hurry and without full focus on what i am doing. Someone will take the better of you, and empty your wallet before you can even blink your eyes, and the worst part is that you even pay for the transaction yourself.
Further more, one of the mistakes i made on this particular asset, was that i bought it with 2 of my friends, whom now also lost there assets. And this particular mistake cost me around $900,-. This will take some time for me to regain our loses.
Always triple check everything.
Never do a transaction in a hurry, take your time and read the transaction transcript before accepting.
Never buy assets with multiple people in one wallet.
Check official sources (game / asset homepage, telegram, discord etc) first before doing anything.
And also DYOR!
I hope, with this article, that i can prevent someone else from being scammed like i was yesterday and make you aware of the fact that everybody is after your money and there is no way to get it back after your assets are transacted.
This truly sucks and it will take time and money to rebuild my portfolio from scratch again.