More and more people have been getting scammed because of U theft. Depositing $500,000 into a bank takes five minutes, but if you click a phishing link, it’s gone in under a second. Scammers in China have long upgraded from traditional telecom fraud to virtual-coin scams. Their methods are getting more sophisticated, and it’s hard to guard against.

After observing it, I’ve found that U-theft scams are so rampant now because virtual currencies are not legally protected domestically. When victims report the case, many police officers don’t even know what USDT is, and they tell you directly that it isn’t protected—so no case will be filed in the first place. Victims can only blame their bad luck, which is also why scammers are so bold and reckless.

Today, I mainly want to talk about three of the most common U-theft scams, hoping to help everyone avoid pitfalls.

The first is U theft via QR-code authorization. During a transaction, scammers send you a QR code and ask you to scan it. It looks like a transfer, but what it’s actually doing is authorizing a smart contract that controls your wallet. The key point is: any QR-code “transfer” that requires you to transfer to a third party to complete the transaction is a scam. Normally, when you decode a QR code, it reveals a transfer address, but a scammer’s QR code decodes to a third-party redirect link. This kind of scam is especially easy to fool beginners, because they think virtual currency is high-return and risk-free. After being talked into it by the scammers in a few lines, they get spun around—and even after they’re scammed, they end up thanking the scammer.

The second is clipboard-manipulation malware—this one is particularly vicious. Someone told me before that their computer had been infected: whenever they copy a Bitcoin address, it gets replaced, while other text doesn’t change. Scammers will send you some documents that look very tempting, with names that are especially misleading. Once you download and open them, any transfer links you copy afterward will be replaced with the scammer’s address. For example, if you copy an address ending in 123, when you paste it, it turns into 567. So never randomly click download links or files—this is how you can avoid the risk of U theft.

The third is U theft through a fake wallet, which is also a high-frequency scam category. Because cold wallets are open source, it’s not hard to create an imitation. This scam usually uses a chain of traps, and beginners can’t spot it. Scammers first lure you in with high returns and get you to voluntarily download a fake wallet. At the beginning, small transfers are fine, but once you have a large deposit, the fake wallet will directly lock your account and force you to pay a so-called “guarantee” fee to unfreeze it. Then it shifts from a scam into a money-draining scheme, constantly demanding that you pay more until you empty your savings and only then realize you’ve been scammed—but by that point, it’s already too late.

So in the end, I still want to remind everyone: don’t believe in overnight riches. Before you get attracted by the high returns of virtual currencies, scammers may already be targeting your principal. No matter what investment opportunity it is, be extra cautious. There are so many ways to carry out U theft—protecting your wallet is the most important thing.