You are already being deceived!
Forex scam

Forex fraud is any dubious scheme that scammers use to take money from traders. There is a huge variety of options for such schemes, and fraudsters can achieve their goals in different ways:

• offer certain options for earning money (passive investments, automated trading, signals, etc.).);
• use different means of communication (messengers, social networks, phone calls, etc.).);
• use specialized software and hardware.

Absolutely everyone is under threat, starting from beginners who only heard about forex yesterday, and ending with experienced traders who have been trading for more than a dozen years. All of them from time to time fall prey scammers. But we hope that after reading this article, you will be able to easily identify fraudulent schemes and protect your finances from their impact.

Guerrilla marketing

Day by day, the fraudulent tools are getting more sophisticated. And one of the most effective methods is guerrilla marketing, which serves as a cost-effective tool for collecting money from naive newcomers.

Substitution of concepts

Initially, guerrilla marketing appeared as part of SMM promotion. That is, the owners of groups in social networks filled them with comments to create a kind of active community and arouse the interest of new visitors.

But thanks to its high efficiency, it has transformed over time and found its application in many other areas. Of course, this could not fail to draw attention to various scammers, including in the forex market. And today it is used to create thematic communities in messengers, social networks, forums and other online resources.

How Scammers use Guerrilla Marketing

As a rule, guerrilla marketing is used to present its significance. That is, to tell about the project, share positive experiences and make them invest money.

According to statistics, for 85% of content consumers, it is enough to read 10 micro-reviews about the project, so that they have a certain opinion about the brand in their subcortex. All subsequent comments will be perceived subjectively, since the opinion has already been formed and it does not need to be supported by anything. That is why scammers strive to keep their positive comments always in sight.

The scheme

If you are interested in forex, you will look for useful information in various sources. And at some point, you may find an interesting chat in the messenger or a group in a social network. There can be an active discussion of any product that helps to make a simple profit. This can be, for example, a program for automatic trading, or signals, or strategies, or something else in this spirit.

You become interested in this topic, and you see how people in the group actively write their reviews about how they managed to make a profit. Everyone is doing great, everyone is making money. Someone can write that he increased his deposit by 20% in a month, another says that he earned $5,000. And such comments appear literally every 10 minutes.

In fact, all these people who write about earnings are guerillas. And they do earn money, but not from trading, but simply for publishing such reviews. They are specially trained in this, they have their own private chats where they communicate and discuss new projects for such promotion. Their main task is to create activity, and show the promoted product from the best side.

Sometimes, for the best effect, the guerillas can even made up scandals . For example, someone writes something like: "Hey, I invested money here and lost it." Immediately there is some cool administrator (and in fact the same guerilla), and writes "we will check everything". And after 10 minutes, he returns with an apology, and says that there really was some kind of failure, so they will now return all the lost money and even add a bonus. Next, this fake victim expresses his admiration for the quality of services. Well, green beginners come to the conclusion that here they won't be scammed.

In fairness, I must say that this method of promotion is often used by really high-quality projects as well. But the guerillas themselves don't care what they advertise. Whatever they are paid for.

In general, when viewing such a chat, you get the impression that the program (strategy, signals, project, etc) really makes a profit. And you decide to buy this program, or invest in the project. At the same time, you can ask any question, and you will be answered either by experienced chat participants, or even by the administrator himself. As for the cost, you can get absolutely any figure, it can be as much as $100, and 1000 or even 20,000 dollars.

At this stage, you may have doubts, but you will still stay in the group and watch it. And you will see that new people are constantly coming there, they are also interested and ask their questions. Sometimes one of them decides to buy the program. And there can be 99.9% of such genuine beginners there. For example, if there are 10,000 people in a group, then 30-50 of them will be guerillas. The others are just like you, just watching.

Accordingly, it is advantageous for the creators of such a scam to constantly keep a small number of guerillas, since all costs are paid off by selling the program.

How to figure out Guerrilla marketing

Given that such groups are almost all real people, it is very difficult to understand whether guerrilla marketing is used there or not. There are really a lot of messages, there can be 100, 200 and sometimes 1000 messages per day. It is unlikely that you will read all of them, but even if there occasionally appears some negative comment, the admin fraudster will delete it almost immediately, and the commentator will be banned.

The first way to understand whether the product you are selling is really of high-quality is to write to the administrator, or just ask in the chat if you can try the demo version. And it doesn't matter if it's a program, or a strategy, or signals. You should be able to test for free.

At the same time, you can say that you are really interested in this program, you are ready to invest even 100 thousand dollars. But first you want to test the effectiveness. If their product is not working, then in most cases they will not allow it to be tested. But you should understand that for real smart developers, this is not a problem. And if their program is indeed high-quality, then they will definitely allow you to test it.

Scammers can start referring to the fact that, like, 150 people write that they are doing well and they are making money. Someone make 100 dollars, and someone 20 thousand. You can ignore such arguments until you test the program yourself, and don't even think about buying it.

However, the ability to test the product is also not a 100% guarantee of its effectiveness. For example, in the cryptocurrency market, there is such a type of scam, when scammers allow you to test a trading robot. Most likely, in this case, he will have a high minimum deposit for work, for example, $5,000. And after connecting such a program, it simply begins to trade some shitcoin, which may have a turnover of only $100 per day. This program works in parallel on two accounts. On the one hand, you buy a garbage coin, on the other – the fraudster sells you this coin for more. In this way, it simply transfers money from your account to their.

As one of the verification options, you can ask for real feedback. For example, from the mql5.com market. It was created by the developers of the MetaTrader 5 terminal. There, the moderators more or less monitor the quality of the products, and they are not interested in promoting fraudulent projects.

Sometimes you may come across less high-quality fraud, which can be identified at a glance. It is enough to pay attention to the following points:

1. For paid commenters, all reviews can be template-based and have approximately the same number of characters. Or the same comments are copied word for word in different chats.
2. Lack of specifics. That is, they talk about big earnings, but they do not share real cases. They just show you where you can earn a large sum without much expense.
3. Excessive emotionality. Instead of putting the story of their success on the shelves, the partisans beautifully use epithets, metaphors and hyperbole.
4. All the "lucky ones" have a set of random symbols and a cool car instead of a name and a photo, or something like that.
5. Hurry. For example, now there is a promotion where the program can be purchased at a reduced price, and in 2 days it will become 10 times more expensive.

Just these five simple rules will be enough to get past the very obvious fraud.But once again, it is very difficult to distinguish professional scammers.

In general, guerrilla marketing is a dangerous tool that any novice trader can fall for. But if you know the basic methods of fraudsters, you can avoid many mistakes and save your money for more profitable investments.

Sites selling programs from the market but at a lower price

If you trade forex, you can use special software for this purpose. It will allow you to increase your efficiency and simplify your work with the market. But when choosing such software, it is important to find a good seller. Otherwise, your results may not be what you expect at all.

Where to buy

To get a full-fledged and accurately working program, we recommend choosing sites with a quality guarantee. At the moment, one of the most reliable and popular options is the "Market" on the MQL5 site. You can find it at this address: https://www.mql5.com/en/market.

When using this platform, you can be sure that you are buying an indicator, Expert Advisor, or script directly from the developer, and not from an intermediary who is not responsible for the quality.

The MQL5 market has the following advantages:

• The largest selection of applications. You have access to more than 2 thousand indicators and robots for MT4 and MT5 terminals.
• The interface allows you to sort programs by price, popularity, and date of addition.
• There is a testing feature. In most cases, before buying a robot or an Expert Advisor, you can check its performance. The site has a demo version that is installed on a PC.
• There is a rental service. You can rent the app for a convenient period of time to get the experience of using it in real conditions.
• Many high-quality free apps.

On the web, you can find other sites that sell various software for trading on Forex. They often underestimate the cost to attract the attention of users. But the more affordable price is due to low service, and sometimes fraud.

In the case of MQL5, everything is reliable. Sellers here work according to the official regulations. The essence of these rules is as follows:

• Developers who put their software up for sale must register. Market specialists always check the accuracy of the specified data.
• Applications are tested. Before the program is put up for sale, it is checked. If significant problems are identified, it will not be allowed to be sold.
• Payments pass through well-secured connections. The buyer does not risk anything.
• Each purchase has an installation code. You get access to it after payment. You can use the code to activate the program on multiple PCs.

Dumping sites, selling trading robots, do not provide such a level of service. There you run the risk of getting a program with bugs or, in principle, does not correspond to the declared characteristics.

Third-party sites

You can compete with MQL5, but it is difficult. It is difficult to offer such a wide selection, high quality and reliability in different price ranges.

Therefore, scammers or unscrupulous developers focus on low prices. They vividly describe the product posted on their website and put up a very attractive price tag. This is what inexperienced traders with a limited budget react to.

The real picture is that the promises of very profitable robots for cheap are unfounded. People buy software and get very disappointed.

If you choose low price instead of high quality, you may face the following problems:

• A non-working or "weak" product under the guise of an original well-known program. Scammers simply copy some features of the software so that it can be sold. After the purchase, problems often occur in such programs.
• Only one activation is sold. This means that you get a one-time code. You will not be able to reactivate it if you reinstall the operating system on your computer. When changing the PC, the situation will be the same.
• Old versions of the software. Scammers often sell outdated programs that are not able to perform the necessary tasks effectively.
• Receiving the robot after payment. On many sites, you first need to transfer money to the seller's wallet to get the robot without the opportunity to test it. In such a situation, anything can be downloaded. And this is not always the software product you expect.

In general, most sites that sell trading robots at low prices do not offer what you want to get. As a result, you will have to spend money again on another, working program.

But thanks to the Market, you can avoid such problems and just buy high-quality apps. Moreover, reliable payment systems and bank cards are used. All this is complemented by the close integration of MQL5 with the MetaTrader terminal - programs are downloaded directly from the trading platform.

Here we also want to draw attention to the fact that sometimes developers can sell software on their own site and on MQL5 at the same time. This is a normal situation. The fact that they were able to place their offers in the Market indicates a high quality of their work.

We also want to invite you to check the programs in our store. Here you will find a lot of high-quality indicators, expert advisors and robots.

Custom development

Sometimes it may be that you will not find an application that meets your needs in the Market. In this case, you can order a custom program from the developers. To do this, go to the "Freelance" section on the MQL5 website https://www.mql5.com/en/job.

Specialists who offer their services perform their work quickly and efficiently. Everything is arranged in such a way that the payment for the completed order remains frozen until you confirm that you are satisfied with everything.

If there are disputes, you can apply to arbitration. But in any case, professional developers value the opportunity to offer their services in MQL5, so they try to do their work with maximum quality.

It is extremely difficult to find the same order fulfillment conditions on third-party sites. There is always a risk that after the payment you will receive a " raw " program. And for any improvements, you will have to pay extra.

In general, the presence of a seller in MQL5 is a confirmation of the high level of his responsibility. Conversely, if the developer of Forex applications does not place their robots in the Market, it looks strange.

Phone Fraud

Today, the topic of trading is quite popular and scammers actively use it for their own purposes. They often try to deceive people with phone calls, messages in messengers and social networks. And if you are interested in trading or investing, then most likely, your contacts are already in their database.

The essence of phone calls fraud

One of the fraud options is calls from alleged brokers offering earnings in popular markets:

• Forex.
• The stock market.
• Cryptocurrencies.

And in general, I must say that this type of fraud can hurt absolutely any Internet user. Including elderly people who have no idea what trading and investing are, and in general, except for Skype, they do not use the Internet.

If you are contacted by such a conman, then everything will sound beautiful and convincing in the conversation. The caller will talk about large amounts and stable passive income. To do this, you just need to register in a project, or immediately transfer a small (or large) amount to an investment account.

They can also offer professional forecasts for currencies and stocks. In this case, you will also need to pay a certain amount. Then you will supposedly get high-quality analytics on promising assets. But no one sends any working forecasts in the end. Some information can be given, but it will not be of practical value.

Often calls are made by professional psychologists, who can captivate even a skeptical layman with a bright offer. For example, to lull vigilance, from the first seconds of the conversation, various statements about the success of the broker may be made:

• the profit that the company guarantees;
• the number of satisfied customers;
• types of available programs with very favorable interest rates, etc.

Also, scammers can talk about a profitable promotion, in which high percentages of profit are provided. But you need to make a decision quickly, because there are only 3 free slots left. People are rapidly buying up participation packages, so they are ready to reserve participation in the promotion for you with a partial prepayment. Usually you need to pay right away.

In such a situation, you can safely disconnect. If the company or an unknown caller is forcing you to make a decision in a hurry, then this is fraud 99% of the time.

If you now thought that after sending money, the scammers will simply disappear, and it will be impossible to contact them, then you are mistaken. They will call you back more than once. At the same time, they will talk in abstruse phrases, draw some charts, and show how money is growing in your virtual account. You may also be told that your finances are invested in shares of a large company, such as Google, Apple, Tesla, etc.

All this is done to convince you to invest more money. Scammers will advise you to borrow from friends, take a loan, sell an apartment, car, etc. After all, you are already almost a millionaire, and it is simply necessary to risk a "small" amount now.

Application

Scammers may say that to start cooperation, you need to install an application that will provide access to trading on the financial market. The software really exists and it can installed on a smartphone.

But the peculiarity of such a program is that you can only transfer money to the account of a fraudster. That is, there are no reverse transactions at all. Moreover, through this software, they can access your other accounts and withdraw money.

Many security experts note that scammers have learned to use social engineering correctly and use your emotions. Therefore, you need to be extremely careful.

Signs of dishonest phone calls

Any broker focused on long-term work will focus on good service. Such companies make sure that customers are comfortable with them.

Scammers act with an eye to creating an emotional impulse and getting money in a short time. For this reason, calls from intruders can arrive at the most inconvenient time. For example, on weekends, in the evening, and even at night. And the communication itself is intrusive.

When receiving calls from unknown people, you need to think about where the callers got your number. Because honest brokers who have been on the market for a long time do not use contact databases with phone numbers purchased on the network.

Instead, they competently conduct advertising campaigns in search engines and social networks. Their task is also to bring you to the site and convince you to create a personal account. After that, if they call the number specified during registration, it is only to provide minimal initial consultations. And if you say you don't have any questions, they won't call you again.

Among high-quality brokers, it is considered good manners when they only quickly respond to your requests and help solve problems if you contact them yourself. But they will definitely not make intrusive calls with shady offers. Therefore, focus on high-quality service is one of the key indicators of honesty.

If you are not registered with a broker who suddenly called, it is better to hang up right away. Most likely, this is a call on the purchased database and there is a fraudster on the other end of the wire. In the same way, you should respond to SMS messages, with promises of large income or "profitable" forecasts. You should also ignore requests to transfer funds from the card.

In addition, unknown individuals may offer to return funds lost due to unsuccessful transactions in the market. Scammers call and assure you that their lawyers will help you take the merged funds from the broker, and immediately offer to fill out an application. The goal is to get a pre-payment for pseudo-services. Similar suggestions can be received in text messages. But the result is known in advance – not only will you not get your money back, but you will also lose additional amounts by paying them to non-existent lawyers.

At the same time, it does not matter how the callers are presented: a bank employee, a police officer, or your relative. The essence is always the same – there is a problem and you need to transfer a certain amount to solve it. You may also be asked to name the card details or PIN code.

Real employees of any official structures will never ask for such a thing. Therefore, we recommend that any call from an unknown number is perceived as an attempt to deceive you, as well as a threat to seize your money or confidential information. And a bold refusal without delving into the details is in most cases the right decision.

Messengers and social networks

Many people have applications of various social networks and messengers installed in their smartphones. Scammers understand this and also use such communication channels. Therefore, any messages from unknown contacts related to money should be immediately suppressed. It is advisable to immediately block such a user.

We advise you to ignore messages or calls if they contain the following components:

• A request to return the money. For example, someone writes or calls and says that they transferred money to you by mistake.
• A message with pictures or links. They may contain malware that steals passwords from exchange and bank accounts and other data. If you open it, you risk losing a lot of money.
• Acquaintance under the guise of common interests. An unknown user in social networks writes a message that he saw your profile in some group where traders communicate. He invites you to share your experience with other people and begins to build a dialogue on this. The ultimate goal of such communication is to involve you in a project where you need to pay for something. A similar scenario may be with the offer to learn from an experienced trader.

In general, you need to realize a simple idea – if strangers offer you to pay for something, it is a fraud for sure. The same applies to calls in which they try to find out some personal information from you

How to protect yourself

There are a few simple rules that will help you save your funds:

• You never need to voice/write your data to strangers (passwords, numbers on the card, etc.). Even if the message comes from a good friend in a social network, you should not believe it – accounts are often hacked. When your first and last name is called, and then you are asked to voice your personal data – date of birth, place of work and residence, you need to end the call and block the number.
• Use the mobile app "Do not pick up the phone". It is a free program that instantly checks the call. It identifies numbers with a low rating (call centers, etc.), and allows you to block them. You will see a notification about an unsafe number even before you pick up the phone.

In order not to give money to scammers, you need to train yourself never to give personal data to unknown persons. And do not continue conversations with strangers trying to get any information about you.

Fraud with an offer to decompile the code

Fraudulent technologies surpass themselves day after day and never stop there. For example, scammers can offer services for modifying expert advisors, indicators, and scripts. But if you try to take advantage of such an offer, you will get nothing but empty promises.

The essence of scam

Almost all professional traders use various programs in their work to optimize trading. If you also use them, then you may want to improve or change them in some way. To do this, you need to edit the source code written by the developer.

Naturally, you do not have the source code as such. So you can try to get it somehow. If you do not have programming skills, you will most likely seek help from other users. And scammers will be happy to "lend a helping hand".

On various websites, blogs, and forums, you can see suggestions for decompiling the code. In other words, it is a translation of the executable file (ex4/ex5) into the source code (mql4/5). After receiving such a code, you can pass it to the programmer so that he can take it and modify it.

But there is one small catch, which is that today the codes for the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 terminals can not be translated into a text instruction in any way. Since the operation of such terminals is based on a unique encryption technology created by the developers themselves.

Even if we assume that someone is actually able to perform such a decompilation, the cost of this service will be a thousand times more than writing a program from scratch.That is, if you want to have your own indicator, Expert Advisor, or script, it will be easier for you to order its full development than to change the existing program.

We can also recommend you to visit our catalog. Here you will find a lot of high-quality programs for optimizing your work with the market.

In fact, scammers simply sell air, since this service does not exist. You may be promised that after the decompilation, you will be able to make adjustments and add features to the program. But the maximum that can be obtained is a cheap imitation of the code, which can not be used in any way.

Among the main advantages of such a procedure, fraudsters can name the following:

1. This allows you to understand the logic of the Expert Advisor and its algorithm. This opportunity is really important, because you trust the Expert Advisor to manage your money.
2. This implies a unique opportunity to modify the source code in order to adjust the working principles of the Expert Advisor in accordance with changing market conditions.
3. This is necessary to eliminate certain barriers set by the developer. For example, a link to a specific account or a limited working time.

Despite the eloquent promises, all those who offer this service are scammers in 100% of cases. In the end, you will simply lose $50-100.

We believe that this option will not be available to users for at least another 10 years. And to date, decompiling a trading program is just a shady promise from scammers.