Crypto community, be vigilant: Cointelegraph has recently noticed an increase in scammers purporting to be our journalists on Telegram, LinkedIn and other social media.
While this is by no means a new phenomenon, this fraudulent activity has seemingly ramped up in recent weeks. Thankfully, their current methods mean that they are not particularly hard to identify.
It’s easier than you think to spot an impostor
There is a very simple rule of thumb to follow here: Cointelegraph does not charge for news articles. Ever.
If anybody contacts you promising positive news coverage of your project on Cointelegraph in return for payment, it is an impostor attempting to scam you out of your hard-earned cryptocurrency. Do not send these people any money, as you will never see it again.
Cointelegraph does offer paid advertising in the form of sponsored articles and banner ads. But all sponsored and advertorial articles are clearly labeled as such on our website. You can contact our dedicated sales team by clicking the “Advertise” link at the top-right of every page on our website.
Watch out for tricks like these
These imposters commonly set up fake social media accounts with usernames based on the names of our journalists. They will contact you or your organization, offering a positive news article in return for a fee payable in cryptocurrency. They may attach an invoice requesting 50% payment up front, or they may even try to develop trustworthy rapport.
There have also been cases of spoofed email addresses that appear to be an @cointelegraph.com accounts. But don’t be fooled — sender email addresses are incredibly easy to spoof, and the scammer will almost invariably want to continue the interaction via other means, knowing that any response sent to the actual email address will go to the actual writer, who would then be alerted to the scam.
All official contact information for our writers is listed on their individual author page, accessible by clicking the writer’s name at the top of any article. Our author pages may include the author’s email address, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.
Unless you have an ongoing relationship with someone on our team, do not trust approaches unless they come from the profiles listed on our site. If you ever have cause to doubt you are communicating with a genuine member of our team, simply use that team member’s author page on Cointelegraph.com to find their email and contact them directly.
If you have been a victim of fraud or suspect fraud, please email editor@cointelegraph.com.