The FBI Is Warning Against Mobile Game Scams That Involve Cryptocurrency

Pay-to-earn cryp­tocur­ren­cy games on your mobile devices may just be scam, so user be warned. Accord­ing to the FBI crim­i­nals are devel­op­ing fake apps to steal mon­ey from unsus­pect­ing users.

The FBI says these sit­u­a­tions usu­al­ly begin with scam­mers attempt­ing to build online rela­tion­ships with their intend­ed tar­get. Then, after a bond has formed, the crim­i­nal rec­om­mends a gam­ing app where their tar­get can “pur­port­ed­ly earn cryp­tocur­ren­cy rewards in exchange for some activ­i­ty, such as grow­ing ‘crops’ on an ani­mat­ed farm,” accord­ing to the Bureau.

Crim­i­nals will also push vic­tims to build cryp­tocur­ren­cy wal­lets to keep adding to as to ensure more rewards in the game. How­ev­er, once mon­ey stops being dis­trib­uted, the FBI states this is when the scam­mers emp­ty their dig­i­tal wal­lets due to mali­cious pro­grams tied to the app. Crim­i­nals have even told vic­tims they could get their funds back by pay­ing a fake fee.

The FBI pro­vid­ed the fol­low­ing three tips if you are, or plan on, cryp­to gaming:

• Cre­ate a unique wal­let to use. This iso­lates your pri­ma­ry cryp­tocur­ren­cy hold­ings should you unknow­ing­ly grant illic­it actors access to your gam­ing wallet.
• Use a third-par­ty blockchain explor­er to inde­pen­dent­ly check the bal­ances of the address­es in your gam­ing wallet.
• Peri­od­i­cal­ly use a third-par­ty token allowance check­er to help you see which sites or apps you have inad­ver­tent­ly per­mit­ted to access funds in your wal­let and revoke those permissions.