Scam Awareness: Phishing and Impersonations

Scammers are always trying new ways to find victims, so it is a good idea to maintain awareness and always take care when interacting with services online, particularly with respect to your Bitcoin.

Scammers may attempt to impersonate Hardblock, our staff, wallet providers, banks, government agencies/law enforcement, or other trusted organisations in an attempt to steal your Bitcoin, dollars, personal information, or account credentials.

How do Scammers Attempt Contact?

Phishing attempts commonly arrive by email, SMS, phone call, social media, or through fake websites. Scammers may ask you to click a link, provide login details or two-factor authentication codes, install software, transfer Bitcoin, or send funds to a particular wallet address.

Scammers may entice you with special offers or new features in order to excite you enough to click without thinking. Always take your time to read things carefully and try to find a second source to verify something before proceeding.

Be especially cautious of unexpected or urgent requests involving Bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions are generally irreversible, making it difficult or impossible to recover funds sent to a scammer.

Official Hardblock Communication

Always verify that communications have come from us.

• For issues with your account, we will only ever email you from support@hardblock.com.au - always check that the domain (@hardblock.com.au) matches correctly. Beware of characters that look similar but are different, for example 0 instead of o.
• We will never send you an SMS message, unless you have 2FA disabled and login to your account from a new device (or have recently cleared your browser cookies)
• If in doubt, check our X account: https://x.com/HardBlockBTC for the latest news or email our support address yourself to check or report something to us.

Never share your passwords, two-factor authentication codes, wallet seed phrase, private keys, or hardware wallet recovery phrase with anyone. Never install software or browser extensions on your machine that you have not verified for legitimacy.

More Information about Scams

Check out our blogpost about more types of scams and how to avoid them: https://learn.hardblock.com.au/scam-awareness-keeping-your-bitcoin-safe/

https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/ has more information about spotting scams and includes a way for you to report scams.