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Canadian Official Wants Google to Ban Ads for Crypto, ICOs

Canadian official wants google to ban ads for crypto, icos

Canadian Official Wants Google to Ban Ads for Crypto, ICOs

Canadian official wants google to ban ads for crypto, icos

A senior investigator at the Manitoba Securities Commission in Canada has said that the country’s regulators are “very pleased” with social media giant Facebook’s decision to ban ads for bitcoin and initial coin offerings (ICOs),

Jason Roy, who is also the chairman of Canada’s Binary Options Task Force, said that regulators have been in conversations with Google regarding their concern that “these types of ads are leading people to becoming victims.”

He suggested that Google should take a similar course to Facebook, and restrict ad content for binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies.

“There’s just been an explosion of different ICOs and new tokens and crazy offerings. You’re seeing ICOs that are raising large amounts of money and there’s nothing behind them in certain cases, but members of the public are so hyped that they’re throwing money at them,” Roy told The Times of Israel.

Facebook announced its ban on cryptocurrency-related ads in a Jan. 30. blog post. The company’s product management director, Rob Leathern, wrote at the time:

“We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.”

Roy’s comments to the Israeli news site coincide with with more general regulatory chatter from authorities who are increasingly seeking to reign in cryptocurrencies.

On Tuesday, the chairmen of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission testified that ICOs must be treated, and therefore regulated, more like securities than they are at present.

AdWords image via Shutterstock

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Published at Wed, 07 Feb 2018 03:05:01 +0000

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Alphabay Phisher Makes $1 Million in 14 Months Stealing Bitcoins

A deep web hacker operating under the pseudonym of ‘Phishkingz’ has recently claimed to have generated over $1 million from phishing Alphabay accounts during the last 14 months. In a recent interview with Deepdotweb, Phishkingz details the methods that he uses when stealing bitcoins.

Also Read: Law Enforcement Takes Down the Biggest Darknet Market on the Deep Web

Phishkingz Claims to Have Sold 500 Stolen Bitcoins in the Last 14 Months

Alphabay Phisher Makes $1 Million in 14 Months Stealing Bitcoins

Darknet phisher, Phishkingz, recently discussed methods that he claims allowed him to generate over $1 million in 12 months by stealing bitcoins. Phishkingz claims to have traded approximately 500 bitcoin on Localbitcoins in the last 14 months, the entirety of which was generated through phishing.

Phishkingz states that he is also a dark market vendor. His decision to start phishing to steal bitcoins was made following the discovery of an error on Alphabay’s forums “that allowed [Phishkingz] to see new members the second they joined.” The hacker would then directly contact new members, “send[ing[ them to my link with a verification process.” From them, Phishkingz is “able to obtain the login details syncing, and the mnemonic phrases, as well as any PGP private key and password and pin code.”

The hacker would then “save a bookmark using blockchain.info… [and] highlight 50 [addresses] at a time every 20 minutes checking for deposits”. The majority of the withdrawals would be processed manually, despite early experimentation with bots. Phishkingz claims that his operations expanded to a scale that required the assistance of employees, stating that at one point he “had 27 people working… running phishers” that were stealing bitcoins for him.

The Admins Didn’t Really Care About Their Customers

Alphabay Phisher Makes $1 Million in 14 Months Stealing Bitcoins

Phishkingz describes Alphabay’s moderators as providing little support to his victims. “The admins didn’t really care about their customers, and it only took opening a support ticket with a problem to learn this. BM (Big Muscles – an Alphabay moderator) especially is a stupid one. He would let me into accounts for 50% if I provided mnemonic phrase knowing I had phished the account in the first place.”

Following the recent removal of Alphabay, the bitcoin hacker claims to “have moved to Dream Market and already made 4 BTC since yesterday launching the new site.”

The number of phishers attempting to hack bitcoins outside of the deep web has also recently proliferated. The record breaking Tezos ICO has attracted the attention of phishers, seeing clone sites being hosted for the purposes of stealing bitcoins. Other creative hackers have recently started setting up websites for fake ICOs, infecting victims’ computers through downloading malicious software disguised as project whitepapers. With bitcoin and altcoins seeing unprecedented media exposure, a growing presence of bitcoin hackers and scammers operating in all corners of the internet appears to be an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of greater cryptocurrency adoption.

Have you ever fallen victim to a phishing scam? Share your story in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Wikipedia

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The post Alphabay Phisher Makes $1 Million in 14 Months Stealing Bitcoins appeared first on Bitcoin News.

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