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The problem is that most people tricked into "investing" in such platforms probably don't make anything like a software engineer at Google. This loss hurts them

The problem is that most people tricked into "investing" in such platforms probably don't make anything like a software engineer at Google. This loss hurts them a lot.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago
Even knowledgeable people can fall victim to attacks like this.
- bkolobara 9y ago
  You make it sound like I claimed that people not working at google are less intelligent. My point was that if you are already making good money you are not looking for lottery tickets to buy.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    But still there are seemingly a few people that threat dollars as peanuts. The data on the page on Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/address/0x29d7d1dd5b6f9c864d9db560d72a247c178ae86b https://etherscan.io/address/0x29d7d1dd5b6f9c864d9db560d72a2... does provide some insight at a quick analysis. The total sent is (at the 494,170.68/1492=331.214 rate) almost exactly 500,000 US$ (499,821.59) of which, in four operation of 373 Eth each 1492 Eth were withdrawn 494,170.68. Of the 212 total operation 4 are withdrawals, 3 are 0, that makes 205 "IN" operations. The distribution of the amounts of the single operations/deposits is interesting, I quickly put together a few "classes": a. >30,000 2 Total 66,243 US$ b. 20-30,000 3 Total 70,840 US$ c. 10-20,000 6 Total 82,803 US$ d. 5-10,000 14 Total 102,576 US$ e. 2.5-5,000 23 Total 80,125 US$ f. 1-2,500 33 Total 54,225 US$ g. 0-1,000 124 Total 43,010 US$ If the "targeted audience" was around 9,000, roughly 200 or 2.2% fell for the phishing. A handful of people (classes a., b., c., 11 in total, i.e. coincidentally roughly the 0.1%) contributed for almost half the amount 66,243+70,840+82,803=219,886 219,886/500,000=43,98%.
- justadeveloper2 9y ago
  Smart people are often the easiest to scam because they believe they can't be scammed.
  - trophycase 9y ago
    Source?
  - wsc981 9y ago
    I am not sure they are. If we look at the Nigerian '419' scam, apparently the emails are written in bad English to filter out the smarter people that are unlikely to fall for the scam anyway. The reason is that handling the response on such an email is labor intensive and the people behind those scams prefer to only use labor when chance of success is high. See: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fpubs%2F167719%2Fwhyfromnigeria.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
pavlov 9y ago
My feeling is that most people are investing profits from another virtual currency. So it's not "real money" (in the sense of doing a deposit of USD and sending that to the ICO), but an existing paper profit that they want to try multiply further by putting it into another speculative asset.

The problem is that most people tricked into "investing" in such platforms probably don't make anything like a software engineer at Google. This loss hurts them a lot.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago

Even knowledgeable people can fall victim to attacks like this.

bkolobara 9y ago
You make it sound like I claimed that people not working at google are less intelligent. My point was that if you are already making good money you are not looking for lottery tickets to buy.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  But still there are seemingly a few people that threat dollars as peanuts. The data on the page on Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/address/0x29d7d1dd5b6f9c864d9db560d72a247c178ae86b https://etherscan.io/address/0x29d7d1dd5b6f9c864d9db560d72a2... does provide some insight at a quick analysis. The total sent is (at the 494,170.68/1492=331.214 rate) almost exactly 500,000 US$ (499,821.59) of which, in four operation of 373 Eth each 1492 Eth were withdrawn 494,170.68. Of the 212 total operation 4 are withdrawals, 3 are 0, that makes 205 "IN" operations. The distribution of the amounts of the single operations/deposits is interesting, I quickly put together a few "classes": a. >30,000 2 Total 66,243 US$ b. 20-30,000 3 Total 70,840 US$ c. 10-20,000 6 Total 82,803 US$ d. 5-10,000 14 Total 102,576 US$ e. 2.5-5,000 23 Total 80,125 US$ f. 1-2,500 33 Total 54,225 US$ g. 0-1,000 124 Total 43,010 US$ If the "targeted audience" was around 9,000, roughly 200 or 2.2% fell for the phishing. A handful of people (classes a., b., c., 11 in total, i.e. coincidentally roughly the 0.1%) contributed for almost half the amount 66,243+70,840+82,803=219,886 219,886/500,000=43,98%.
justadeveloper2 9y ago
Smart people are often the easiest to scam because they believe they can't be scammed.
- trophycase 9y ago
  Source?
- wsc981 9y ago
  I am not sure they are. If we look at the Nigerian '419' scam, apparently the emails are written in bad English to filter out the smarter people that are unlikely to fall for the scam anyway. The reason is that handling the response on such an email is labor intensive and the people behind those scams prefer to only use labor when chance of success is high. See: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fpubs%2F167719%2Fwhyfromnigeria.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...

pavlov 9y ago

My feeling is that most people are investing profits from another virtual currency. So it's not "real money" (in the sense of doing a deposit of USD and sending that to the ICO), but an existing paper profit that they want to try multiply further by putting it into another speculative asset.