If you are starting a new brand, remember to buy all the domains associated with that name. Electrum is learning this the hard way.
Electrum, a popular bitcoin wallet service, uses electrum.org as its primary web address. “An alleged scammer has since bought the similar-sounding .com domain, which they’re using to mimic Electrum’s services. It’s styled as Electrum Pro, “the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet.”
Electrum took to Twitter to clarify that it does not own electrum.com and that it is likely a ‘bitcoin stealing malware’.
Electrum's website is https://t.co/aHiZIZH54e. We do not own electrum dot com, and "Electrum Pro" is very likely bitcoin stealing malware. Please use https://t.co/Rne1yx5acw for a list of Bitcoin wallet websites.
— Electrum (@ElectrumWallet) April 5, 2018
On primary inspection, ElectrumPro leaves no doubt about it being a scam. The website attempts to present their product as an upgrade to Electrum as if it belonged to the same team.
Their website lists 4 team members with broken GitHub links and no other social media profiles. The names do not ring a bell in the blockchain community either. All community links are broken, except for a Twitter account with just one tweet:
ElectrumPro v4.0.2 is released! #Electrum #PaperWallet #Exchange #Update https://t.co/lnfqfh6kxc
— ElectrumPro (@ElectrumDotCom) March 27, 2018
It is basically a course in “How to spot a scam 101”.
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