Try This New Tool to Catch a Crypto Scammer on Telegram

As crypto scammers run wild on the Telegram messaging app, which boasts around 1 billion active users, security experts have just released a new tool that might make your interactions on this platform at least a bit more secure.

On Telegram, the Open Security Alliance (SEAL), a team of crypto security experts, has rolled out their SEAL Assistant Bot, which helps check Telegram accounts against their databases.

After starting the bot, you need to click on the sandwich menu in the bottom-left corner of the app and select 'Check Telegram users against SEAL Databases' from the available options. Next, just follow the bot's instructions and add a user you want to check, or simply forward their message. In a few seconds, you should get the answer on whether this account is associated with any reports or malicious activity in SEAL's databases.

Therefore, there's no guarantee that even if the account is not flagged by SEAL, it's a legitimate Telegram user—as the database might just not have information about them.

The databases are updated by collecting threat intelligence from SEAL 911 and SEAL Intel. The former is a free service aimed at helping victims with ongoing or imminent security incidents "at any time of the day," while SEAL Intel is focused on gathering, analyzing, and disseminating blockchain and cryptoasset threat intelligence.

Just last week, Taylor Monahan, a security expert at the most popular Ethereum (ETH) wallet, MetaMask, said she identified another group of scammers impersonating "good guys" on Telegram.

"They love to impersonate [venture capitalists] but will also impersonate founders and all sorts of random people. Usually, they try to get you on a call, sometimes they'll drop a [GitHub] repo or package instead," Monahan said, urging people to stop doing calls and running random code on the same computer used to access your cryptoassets.

The security expert also shared screenshots of conversations with impersonators.

In either case, Telegram users need to stay vigilant while interacting on this app. For example, as reported by LEAKD, in January this year, crypto security experts from Scam Sniffer warned that Telegram malware scams had already surpassed traditional phishing. According to their data, from November 2024 to January 2025, malicious Telegram group scams increased by more than 2000%, while regular phishing remained stable.