According to a recent survey, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase became the most impersonated brand by scammers and malicious actors in the Web3 space. Among all US-based crypto firms, the Coinbase brand was most frequently mimicked in phishing attacks. Phishing attacks are online social schemes aimed at tricking investors into willingly sending their crypto assets to the impersonator’s crypto wallet.
Phishing Scams Remain a Hot Topic
According to a Mailsuite report shared with the public, the Coinbase brand was fraudulently used in 416 phishing attacks reported over the past four years. The report, which analyzed over 1.14 million frauds, claimed that more than 249,000 of these incidents involved the attacker impersonating a company or organization.
According to CoinMarketCap, Coinbase became the world’s second-largest centralized crypto exchange with over $1.8 billion in daily crypto trade volume. Data from CoinGecko shows that Coinbase has a high trust score of 10/10 and receives over 40.9 million monthly visits.
Noteworthy Details on the Subject
While Coinbase ranks among the top crypto firms, other traditional finance and technology brands are impersonated at a higher scale by scammers. The report states that Bank of America was impersonated in 645 phishing attempts, while Mastercard was targeted in 1,262 attacks.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, became the most impersonated brand by scammers, involved in at least 10,457 reported fraud incidents over the past four years. The IRS ranked second on the list with at least 9,762 fraud cases. Despite signs of maturation in the cryptocurrency industry, crypto scams and abuses remain a growing concern.
According to a Crystal Intelligence report, approximately $19 billion worth of crypto was stolen through 785 reported attacks and exploits over the past 13 years. The largest crypto theft case remains the 2019 Plus Token scam, where attackers seized $2.9 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
