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> YouTube Saylor and Musk giveaway scams I think I saw one of these once. It involved an atrocious (but still somehow impressive) deepfake of Musk. Is this com

> YouTube Saylor and Musk giveaway scams I think I saw one of these once. It involved an atrocious (but still somehow impressive) deepfake of Musk. Is this common?

paranoidrobot 4y ago
No idea about the deepfake thing, but a few years ago I noticed a whole bunch of old channels that I had subscribed to were taken over and replaced with Musk-related giveaway scams. Never watched any of the videos or livestreams - the title, thumbnail and (renamed) channel name were enough to make it obviously scams. Youtube is incredibly slow to respond to these kinds of things.
wmf 4y ago
They're very common; I've seen a dozen or more. The ones I've seen don't look like deepfakes; they're random Elon Musk or Cathie Wood videos with a URL for a scam site superimposed.
searchableguy 4y ago
They are getting very creative too. There is a common bot scam nowadays where it will ask for help and share private keys of a crypto wallet with money inside it. The catch is to transfer those tokens from the crypto wallet, you have to fund it with native token to pay the gas fee. When you do, the gas fees is automatically sniped by the bot and stolen. Another interesting one I've come across is where scammers plant obvious bot tweets and then other bots call them out to upsell security services by a random account which then setup a similar trap. It's amusing to watch. I might fall for some of them if I wasn't aware of them. I can't imagine an average person not getting fished.
- MichaelBurge 4y ago
  > When you do, the gas fees is automatically sniped by the bot and stolen. Wouldn't stealing the gas fee cost more gas to initiate a theft transaction? So they'd be net-zero? Or do they use a SUICIDE op, etc. to get a partial gas refund?
  - simplify 4y ago
    I think the idea is, someone would fund it with more than just enough to pay for gas, making the snipe profitable.
- civilized 4y ago
  I consider myself a "normal person" in this matter, just one who happens to hold the belief that crypto is always, everywhere, and fundamentally a scam -- even though the technology is cool and theoretically could be used for honest purposes. This makes it easy to avoid getting hosed :)

> YouTube Saylor and Musk giveaway scams I think I saw one of these once. It involved an atrocious (but still somehow impressive) deepfake of Musk. Is this common?

paranoidrobot 4y ago

No idea about the deepfake thing, but a few years ago I noticed a whole bunch of old channels that I had subscribed to were taken over and replaced with Musk-related giveaway scams. Never watched any of the videos or livestreams - the title, thumbnail and (renamed) channel name were enough to make it obviously scams. Youtube is incredibly slow to respond to these kinds of things.

wmf 4y ago

They're very common; I've seen a dozen or more. The ones I've seen don't look like deepfakes; they're random Elon Musk or Cathie Wood videos with a URL for a scam site superimposed.

searchableguy 4y ago

They are getting very creative too. There is a common bot scam nowadays where it will ask for help and share private keys of a crypto wallet with money inside it. The catch is to transfer those tokens from the crypto wallet, you have to fund it with native token to pay the gas fee. When you do, the gas fees is automatically sniped by the bot and stolen. Another interesting one I've come across is where scammers plant obvious bot tweets and then other bots call them out to upsell security services by a random account which then setup a similar trap. It's amusing to watch. I might fall for some of them if I wasn't aware of them. I can't imagine an average person not getting fished.

MichaelBurge 4y ago
> When you do, the gas fees is automatically sniped by the bot and stolen. Wouldn't stealing the gas fee cost more gas to initiate a theft transaction? So they'd be net-zero? Or do they use a SUICIDE op, etc. to get a partial gas refund?
- simplify 4y ago
  I think the idea is, someone would fund it with more than just enough to pay for gas, making the snipe profitable.
civilized 4y ago
I consider myself a "normal person" in this matter, just one who happens to hold the belief that crypto is always, everywhere, and fundamentally a scam -- even though the technology is cool and theoretically could be used for honest purposes. This makes it easy to avoid getting hosed :)