Give and Take: An End-To-End Investigation of Giveaway Scam Conversion Rates
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2024
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| _version_ | 1866929501151166464 |
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| author | Liu, Enze Kappos, George Mugnier, Eric Invernizzi, Luca Savage, Stefan Tao, David Thomas, Kurt Voelker, Geoffrey M. Meiklejohn, Sarah |
| author_facet | Liu, Enze Kappos, George Mugnier, Eric Invernizzi, Luca Savage, Stefan Tao, David Thomas, Kurt Voelker, Geoffrey M. Meiklejohn, Sarah |
| contents | Scams -- fraudulent schemes designed to swindle money from victims -- have existed for as long as recorded history. However, the Internet's combination of low communication cost, global reach, and functional anonymity has allowed scam volumes to reach new heights. Designing effective interventions requires first understanding the context: how scammers reach potential victims, the earnings they make, and any potential bottlenecks for durable interventions. In this short paper, we focus on these questions in the context of cryptocurrency giveaway scams, where victims are tricked into irreversibly transferring funds to scammers under the pretense of even greater returns. Combining data from Twitter, YouTube and Twitch livestreams, landing pages, and cryptocurrency blockchains, we measure how giveaway scams operate at scale. We find that 1 in 1000 scam tweets, and 4 in 100,000 livestream views, net a victim, and that scammers managed to extract nearly \$4.62 million from just hundreds of victims during our measurement window. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_09757 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Give and Take: An End-To-End Investigation of Giveaway Scam Conversion Rates Liu, Enze Kappos, George Mugnier, Eric Invernizzi, Luca Savage, Stefan Tao, David Thomas, Kurt Voelker, Geoffrey M. Meiklejohn, Sarah Cryptography and Security Scams -- fraudulent schemes designed to swindle money from victims -- have existed for as long as recorded history. However, the Internet's combination of low communication cost, global reach, and functional anonymity has allowed scam volumes to reach new heights. Designing effective interventions requires first understanding the context: how scammers reach potential victims, the earnings they make, and any potential bottlenecks for durable interventions. In this short paper, we focus on these questions in the context of cryptocurrency giveaway scams, where victims are tricked into irreversibly transferring funds to scammers under the pretense of even greater returns. Combining data from Twitter, YouTube and Twitch livestreams, landing pages, and cryptocurrency blockchains, we measure how giveaway scams operate at scale. We find that 1 in 1000 scam tweets, and 4 in 100,000 livestream views, net a victim, and that scammers managed to extract nearly \$4.62 million from just hundreds of victims during our measurement window. |
| title | Give and Take: An End-To-End Investigation of Giveaway Scam Conversion Rates |
| topic | Cryptography and Security |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09757 |