Let's start with some numbers. In 2017 people raised $1.7 billion in the form of cryptocurrencies through ICOs. According to statistics, the tenth of this amount was stolen by hackers. The amount stolen is equivalent to $225 million. Approximately 30,000 investors lost their money (actual estimates may vary due to price volatility and the calculation methods).
Another nasty thing associated with ICOs is that many projects don't take hacker attacks seriously if it doesn't prevent them from achieving their goals. Moreover, investors don't have any guarantees when they invest in ICOs, so the significant costs of security and the involvement of companies to prevent cyber attacks are uncommon in the crypto community.
Let's see the most common fraudulent activities in ICOs
"Phishing". Criminals transfer money to their wallets on behalf of the project. Quite often hackers do DDoS to switch attention while they transfer money. To prevent this threat, ICO projects should regularly monitor social networks, forums, DNS names and registrations of new domains. When detecting phishing content - immediately block it.
Furthermore, scammers often use "stolen identity" method. They create fake accounts under the name of managers from different projects to lure money from investors.
In addition to blocking phishing sites, companies conducting ICO should pay attention to the "brand protection" as it is another way hackers use to steal money from the projects. Using a project's brand or ICO logos scammers can steal money and deposit to their wallets, so the ICO will not receive the investor's money, and the investor will in fact simply lose his or her money. ICO projects need to respond quickly in such cases and regularly check the Internet for the availability of such resources. If such resources are present on the web they should be immediately blocked. The project's community should be notified of such fraudulent resources as soon as possible.
Advice 1. Before you transfer money to the project you should get acquainted with it. We recommend joining Telegram chats, forums where the project's managers publish their news and follow the project's groups on all possible social media websites. Carefully check the project's website and the name of the ICO, through which you transfer money.
Advice 2. Many projects that raise money this way are initially similar to financial pyramids. They have a so-called White Paper, in which they describe what they want to do, how they will spend money. A potential investor needs to study this document and approach the process of buying tokens as a venture investment, that is very risky, where only one out of ten projects are successful. Of course, such investments can bring a good return, but you also need to be ready for losses. If there is no idea behind the project or the product that the team is going to develop, it is a "pyramid".
One of the main goals of TokenZone Community is to find fraudulent ICO projects and rule them out from those that are successful and profitable. Also, our readers express their opinions on various projects, which ultimately leads to an objective evaluation of the ICO project. We work in this industry, we personally meet with many projects, and therefore are always ready to answer your questions! Join our telegram channel where you can always find interesting and useful information.