Coinbase will not call customers to warn that their accounts may have been compromised. This is a common scam vector. Nevertheless, someone tried this on me.
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Explanation
Last weekend, an unknown California number told me. An assistant gentleman informed me that my coinbase account was compromised during his recent data breech and he was there to help me not lose my property.
Oh no, horror!
why it matters
All is well, then obviously it is a scam. After hanging with this alleged help desk agent, I read a coinbase spokesperson to verify that there would be no exchange at any point call out His account was compromised to tell them a customer. This scam is 101 – if you are getting a phone call that informs you that your Account agreement has been reachedIn a Crypto Exchange, a bank, IRS, whatever, This is a scamDo not share your personal details and do not provide any password if you get this way.
There were some flaws in an attempt to get me, possibly, transfer my funds from my alleged coinbase account to another address. But I hope that it can be a useful teaching moment for about 70,000 people that have been affected by the recent breech manifestation of the coinbase, as well as any person who receives a phone call, claiming that their information has been compromised. How did it go down here.
Breaking it
let’s start from the beginning. On Saturday, May 24, I received a call from a number that I did not recognize my personal phone, not my public-supporting work number. This is a weekend, where I was actually visiting a family in another state, I did not pick up. Then the same number was called back and I still picked up (yes I know, riveting, but it is 2025 and you can leave a sound mail or text).
Ten minutes later, I received a third call from a different number, which I picked up because I was curious at that time.
A fast -talked gentleman, who called himself a Ricardo, told me that he was part of the coinbase work and security department and he was reaching out because my coinbase account information was compromised and a new email was just added to my account.
I was very confused, for reasons I will get down. But I was also disgusting because there were four red flags immediately. For simplicity, I will refer to the collar from here as a “the agent”, but to be completely clear, I suspect that he is a real customer service agent, representative or other employees of the coinbase, and he was definitely not reaching me as an authorized representative of the exchange.
First, the phone call itself is a big red flag. The coinbase will never call the customer about violation, but will contact customers via email, it is already Said in a tweet,
This is actually standard. Federal Trade Commission website Notes there is a huge range of scams in which someone will call you, and Very Other Companies Warned that their employees will never tell the customer about account issues.
The agent I had talked to will freeze my account for 24 hours to ensure that no fund can be stolen (thanks, I think?) And that a supervisor will reach me (I continue to wait for this supervisor to call). It is believed that the freeze on my account can be extended by three months if there are many unsuccessful login efforts.
To wrap the call, he said that he would send me an email, summarizing all the details that we discussed. Saturday night, I received an email with the subject line “Your case is reviewing.”
Follow Email This very useful customer service representative was sent which was extremely informative.
For one thing, the email address he has associated with my account is a public-focused address, but this is not the email address associated with my real coinbase account (in fairness, I forgot that part until I tried to find my login information after a few days).
Gmail initially (correctly) marked this email as spam. I transferred it to my inbox, where Gmail showed me that the sender (help@info-coinbase.com) was not a real sender-Email came through Learnindonesian.online. still Info-coinbase.com Part sketch is – for one thing, the website of the coinbase is coinbase.comAlthough it sends email from info@info.coinbase.com – still, you will not expect a hyphen in a support email domain. For the second, Info-Coinbase Domain was first built in November 2024 Icann lookup) And not a real website.
Email headers were also not super assistants regarding providing any type of identity information, but they confirmed that the sender tried to disrupt his information.
Eagerly, the “Visit Coinbase” link at the bottom appeared to link to the actual coinbase website and does not appear at any hidden embedded images or other attached files at all in the email. I am not completely sure what is happening there. A real scammer could embed any kind of virus in email or even a trekking pixel. Another normal tool can use scammers, putting it in a phishing link in place of a valid one in an email, trickling the user to steal his login information (it is legal, not legal, technical or any other type of advice; if you stop using someone from this newspaper and stop it, stop it).
While scammers can sometimes find out how much their intended victims have a wallet or account, the person who called me did not appear for the information (as is zero crypto in my coinbase account).
I called the number back on Friday what could happen. Someone picked up. I think my account should be safe now.
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Friday
- 15:00 UTC (11:00 AM ET) A federal judge held a telephone hearing to assess the defense argument of the Roman storm that the Department of Justice may have withdrawn the information. The judge ruled that in his view, the DOJ did not have to review his materials and did not withdraw information that increased to the level of affecting the proceedings.
- ,Washington Post, The White House published a “Make America Healthy Again” report, which cited any studies and references – with teltell signals that AI can be used to generate at least some parts of the report.
- ,federal Reserve, Fed said that 8% of adults responding to a survey said that they had organized a cryptocurrency in the US below 12% four years ago.
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