Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange is the most impersonated brand by scammers and malicious actors in the Web3 space, according to a recent survey.
Among all United States crypto firms, the Coinbase brand was most impersonated in phishing attacks. Phishing attacks are online social schemes that aim to trick investors into willingly sending digital assets to the impersonator’s crypto wallet.
The Coinbase brand was fraudulently used across 416 reported phishing attacks in the past four years, according to a Mailsuite report shared with Cointelegraph.
The report, which analyzed over 1.14 million scams, claimed that over 249,000 of these incidents involved the attacker impersonating a company or organization.
Coinbase is the world’s second-largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange (CEX) with over $1.8 billion of daily crypto trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap.
Coinbase has a high trust score of 10/10 and receives over 40.9 million monthly visits, according to CoinGecko data.
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Meta remains the most impersonated “non-crypto” brand for scammers
While Coinbase ranked the highest among crypto firms, other traditional finance and technology brands have been impersonated by scammers on a higher scale.
According to the report, Bank of America was impersonated in 645 phishing attempts, while Mastercard was targeted in 1,262 such attempts.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, was the most impersonated brand by scammers, appearing in at least 10,457 reported scam incidents during the past four years.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service was the second on the list, having been impersonated in at least 9,762 scams.
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Crypto scams steal $19 billion in 13 years
Crypto scams and exploits remain a growing concern, despite signs of a maturing crypto industry.
Nearly $19 billion worth of crypto was stolen in the past 13 years across 785 reported hacks and exploits, according to a Crystal Intelligence report shared with Cointelegraph.
The largest single crypto theft case remains the 2019 Plus Token fraud when attackers netted $2.9 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
Crypto hacks and exploits remain one of the biggest hurdles impeding mainstream trust and adoption. Crypto hacks in 2024 could potentially top 2023, as the first quarter of 2024 saw $542.7 million worth of stolen funds, a 42% increase compared to the same period in 2023.
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