PANews reported on December 23 that according to Cointelegraph, under the name of "marketing, promotion and finding customers", lists of sensitive information of participants in cryptocurrency industry activities were illegally sold, becoming a treasure trove of data coveted by scammers and malicious actors. These lists detail the full names, phone numbers, nationalities, positions, companies, and personal and business social media links of the participants, which are often collected during the registration process for events at conferences or branch venues. Cointelegraph obtained a "sample" of the list from a seller via Telegram, including four lists from different activities, each with about 60 to 100 participants and containing different data points. Most of the activities took place in the fall of 2024, with participants from many countries including Southeast Asia and India. This indicates the existence of organized international blockchain activity participant data transactions.
These lists are just the tip of the iceberg, and the seller has also shared other sample images associated with Blockchain Fest and Devcon. Among them, a list allegedly containing 1,700 attendees of the November 2024 AIBC conference in Malta is particularly eye-catching. The seller said it would be "only available to a few people" and the asking price dropped from nearly $4,000 to $650. The seller claimed that he would use the proceeds from the sale to buy more lists and shared screenshots of the database. The seller and the data compiler are anonymous, but they all seem to be Russian. The labels of one of the sample data sets are named in Russian, and AI analysis also indicates that the seller is a native Russian speaker. This information may facilitate social engineering scams and threaten the security of participants' cryptocurrency wallet funds.
