Beware of Fake MyEtherWallet Ads on Google

Phishing scams are highly common in the world of the internet.

Phishing, the act of defrauding someone online by posing as a legitimate company to gain access to their financial information, is always something online users should be wary of.

Since cryptocurrencies emerged onto the scene, it didn’t take long for phishing scams to crop up amidst the young, new-hot-thing in Fintech. Phishing scams have now set their sights on Ethereum. Since the uphill climb of the value of Ether and the original derived chain of the hard fork, ETC, criminals and hackers have been feeling rather brazen and advantageous. 

Any form of financial service or product that gains traction is usually targeted, and recently the open source JavaScript client-side Ether wallet, MyEtherWallet has been the victim of a malicious phisher running fake Google Ads. The ads lead users to believe they are visiting the real MyEtherWallet.com site, but they are not.

If users head over to MyEtherWallet’s website, they advise at the top of their site to diligently check the URL before accessing their wallet, or creating a new wallet. The difference between the fake version and the real is that MyEtherWallet uses SSL encryption through the HTTPS protocol and the scam sites don’t (users will notice HTTP instead of HTTPS in the URL). The fake sites will also lead to different addresses (which are MyEtherWallet but spelled differently) such as, “MyEtherWalet” or “MyEthersWallet”, which makes it easier to spot if a user is paying attention.

Due to the phishing issue, members of the Ethereum community have been suggesting that MyEtherWallet should be turned into a standalone application instead of an online service.

MyEtherWallet announced that they hope to have an Android app out by November or December.

To visit the REAL MyEtherWallet site https://www.myetherwallet.com/