As usual, it’s a trap.
Excuse me, could you lend a hand with my problem? USDT TRX20 is kept in my OKX wallet, and my phrase is ({redacted}). Could you tell me how to move it to OKX?
What’s this all about? I could help them, I suppose, since I’m familiar with crypto, but something seems fishy.
I had this question, too, when I started to encounter more and more comments on my YouTube channels.
“Fishy” is how they felt, and indeed, doing some research I discovered my suspicions were right: it’s a trap.
Since it’s kind of interesting, I’ll share what I discovered.
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The seed phrase scam
Crypto “seed phrase” scams involve scammers posting their wallet’s “seed phrase” (essentially a password) and feigning cluelessness to lure you in. If you engage, they may exploit you into depositing funds, which they’ll steal. Ignore these comments and report them if you like. As always, stay skeptical and cautious online. If it feels off, it probably is.
The “phrase” is the key and the lure
You’ll note I’ve redacted the phrase mentioned in the comment. That’s because that’s a seed phrase, a textual representation of an encryption key to someone’s cryptocurrency wallet. Posting it publicly is like posting your password.
They also explicitly mention that their wallet is kept with OKX, a cryptocurrency trading exchange. That’s telling where the password can be used.
Knowing those two things — the phrase and where the wallet is kept — gives you access to that cryptocurrency wallet.
It’s called a seed phrase scam. The scammer hopes you’ll want to help or that you realize how clueless the supposed poster is.
That’s the lure.
The trap
Let’s say you decide to connect to the wallet. You may find a small balance, making it appear legitimate.
What’s odd, at least to me, is that the scammers seem to count on you putting money into the wallet. If you interact with the individual who posted the comment as you try to help them, they may ask you to add funds as a step to fix whatever “problem” they’re having.
Of course, the scammer isn’t as clueless as they appear. They still have access to the wallet, and they immediately abscond with whatever monies you deposit.
Apparently, some folks start using the wallet as their own, with no intent of helping anyone but themselves. Once again, the scammer still has access, and any money deposited shortly disappears.
Steps to take
Ignore these comments.
If you want to take an extra step, report them.
On YouTube, that means clicking on the vertical ellipsis to the right of the comment and then clicking on Report. You’ll be asked to categorize it. Choose “Unwanted commercial content or spam”, and the comment will disappear. It’s unclear if it disappears for everyone or just you. I believe it to be everyone. At a minimum, YouTube uses the report to train their spam-detection algorithm.
Or, as I said, you can just ignore it.
As a YouTube channel owner, I try to report/block them as I find them, mostly because I don’t want any of my viewers to be ensnared by the trap.
Do this
This is an informational curiosity that requires no action on your part.
However, it’s also a good illustration of how being skeptical is always important. New scams are developed every day. If something doesn’t make sense or doesn’t feel right, that’s a sign that you need to look more closely before taking action.
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I don’t think that comment would be removed for everybody. Otherwise, people could have legitimate comments removed. As the owner of the account, if you report it, it might be taken down for everybody.
Do they have some way of stopping you creating your own wallet and transferring funds to it, where they don’t know the seed and can’t get funds back?
If you got enough of these scams then you could build up a decent amount of funds.