by Daniel Taylor
April 2023
Newcomer or old hand, it isn’t always easy to navigate the crypto space. Find out how you protect yourself, and what we’re doing to help improve your safety.
How to spot – and avoid – a crypto scam.
Newcomer or old hand, it isn’t always easy to navigate the crypto space. Let’s be honest, the scammers are out there – particularly on social media. And that makes it critical to protect yourself, and your money.
At Zumo, it’s our mission to get you comfortable with crypto. Find out what you can expect from us, how you protect yourself, and what we’re doing to help you enjoy the benefits of crypto safely and securely.
Keeping it transparent
We’ll always be transparent and upfront about what you can expect from us. To help you avoid any traps, here’s the summary of what we will and won’t do in our communications with you.
Communicating with Zumo
Zumo will not normally contact you directly unless you have reached out to us first or otherwise given your consent to be contacted by us, by opting in to marketing communications, for instance, or choosing to participate in official promotional activity.
That means we will never:
- Contact you by phone unless you ask us to
- Initiate contact via support
- Email you without your prior opt-in or contact
If you do reach out to us, any communication you receive from us will be via an official @zumo.money email address, direct via a customer support representative, or via one of our official social media channels (see list later in this article).
The only cases where we would need to initiate contact with you ourselves would be in the case of compliance issues with your account, to notify you of essential service and legal information such as a change in terms and conditions, or if we need to get in touch with you as a promotion winner. In none of these cases will we ask you your password, passcode or backup phrase.
We may also contact you directly via social media, but only via an official Zumo account and with the option of verifying the authenticity of the message by contacting Zumo support.
Sharing information with Zumo
If you do choose to get in touch with us, we have a robust privacy policy in place and will never ask you for sensitive information about your account.
That means we will never:
- Ask you for your login credentials
- Ask you for your private keys
- Ask you to send money to an ETH or BTC address
We will ask you for certain limited details about yourself as a security precaution to make sure we are speaking to the right person. These will be a total of three items of personal information, depending on the type of user you are and the nature of your request. This may include information such as your date of birth, post code or the last four digits of your card.
Remember, we will never ask you for your password, your backup phrase or any payment to a BTC or ETH address as part of a giveaway or other offer.
What to look out for
Unfortunately, with an increasing number of scam Zumo impersonators popping up on our social channels recently, it pays to be alert. Here are a couple of examples of just how the scammers are operating, so you know precisely what to avoid!
Spam support links
One popular scammer technique is to pose as customer support in the comments section of authentic posts. Here, you can see a post from a fake Zumo impersonator account trying to divert users to a scam link.
Note the poor English and spam link on this fake support reply
Please be aware that we will never share or ask you to follow any kind of link in a comment on a social media post. We will instead ask you to get directly in touch with customer support for further assistance with your query.
In this case, there are other red flags, too. The link is not to the official zumo.money website or ZenDesk support portal, the language of the post is full of mistakes, and the company is categorised as ‘advertising/marketing’ with no reviews – all signs of a scam impersonator account. If you click through to the main page of these sort of impersonator accounts, you can generally see from the follower numbers and activity on the page whether or not you are looking at the official account. We are in the process of getting all our social media accounts verified so you will be able to see at a glance whether or not you are on an official Zumo page.
Fraud giveaways
If something sounds too good to be true, sadly it very often is. Like the fake support link we just saw, this example below is another spam comment left by a fake impersonator account.
Another scam comment trying to trick users with a fake giveaway
Again, we will not post any sort of giveaway information in the comments to a post, and we will certainly not request any payment from you directly. Anything related to a genuine giveaway will be shared directly from the official Zumo social media accounts, and will be verifiable by visiting the zumo.money website.
In this post, the scammer has attempted to recreate the ‘author’ tag as it usually appears at the top of a Zumo post, but not got it quite right. Look out for these sorts of visual discrepancies and be alert to any comments like these with their outsized promises and anonymous Bitcoin deposit addresses. If anyone is trying to convince you to send them money directly, it is almost certainly a scam.
Stay connected with Zumo
If you’re ever in any doubt about anything you see in relation to Zumo, remember you can always refer back to our website and official social media channels. If it’s genuine, you should be able to find the information repeated across our channels.
Official Zumo social media channels
Website
Our official website is https://app.zumo.tech – double check your information here and look out for the padlock security icon!
Customer support
For any customer support queries, it is always best to contact customer support direct at support@zumo.money.
If in doubt….
If you’re ever unsure about something you’ve been asked to do, or a communication you’ve received from us, the best thing to do is to contact us directly and report any suspicious activity.
You can always reach out and contact us direct by emailing us at support@zumo.money.
Your security is our highest priority
Your security is something we take extremely seriously, which is why we offer a non-custodial wallet that leaves you in full control of your funds. If you want to know more about security at Zumo, you can read all about our security measures on our security page here.
Technology aside, we have a zero tolerance policy for any sort of scam posting on any of our channels, and will continue to monitor, report and remove any scammer activity on our social media. We are in the process of verifying our social media channels so that you always know when you are on an official Zumo page, and will keep you updated on this as we have further news. Rest assured we will continue to do everything we can to keep you our users safe, and communicate with you the measures that we are taking to ensure this.
Like everywhere online, you need to know what to look out for, and take the proper precautions. We hope that this overview guide has been helpful and, if you have any questions, please do get in touch with us at support@zumo.money.
