Bitcoin Foundation warns public about scam websites

Critics of Bitcoin like to call the digital currency a "scam". And the truth is that there is no shortage of scams seeking to separate people from their bitcoins—just as there are plenty of scams looking to take away people's dollars.

The most prominent nonprofit in the Bitcoin world is dealing with such a scam right now. On Monday (December 1), the Bitcoin Foundation issued a "fraud alert", warning the public about clones of its website.

Here's the full text of the alert (the screenshot it references is at the top of this post):

Over the past few days we have noticed a significant uptick in complaints directed at our help desk about a fraud being perpetrated upon innocent Bitcoin users.

The Bitcoin Foundation’s website is being cloned and spoofed at web addresses and domains that have absolutely nothing to do with the Bitcoin Foundation.  The offending websites we know about at this time include bitcompensation.com and bitsecuretransfer.com.  Neither of these domains have anything to do with the Bitcoin Foundation.

If you are contacted and directed to a page that looks like the screenshot below, please close your browser as you are about to be scammed out of your Bitcoins.

We are taking steps available to us to help remove these offending websites from the Internet.  While we only know of the two, we are continuing to monitor any other additional scam sites.  If you come across anything that looks like this screen shot, or something similar perhaps in a language other than English, please forward the web address to webmaster@bitcoinfoundation.org with the subject line “SCAM SITE”.

Thank you for your attention,

The Bitcoin Foundation Web Team

Losing bitcoins isn't like losing your debit card or credit card. Once they've left your wallet, there's really no way to get them back.