Websites That Do Not Give Free Bitcoins (III)

Yes, after issues one and two, it's time for another round of websites that do not give free bitcoins. Maybe they once gave but now don't. Or perhaps they were a scam from the beginning. Either way, here are my last findings. If you see these sites linked, don't lose your time: ignore them!

Don't let these sites fool you!

11. GOXKEYGEN:

As you may already know if you've been following this blog for some time, GOXKEYGEN gave you codes that you could redeem at Mt.Gox for a handful of microbitcoins. Now it redirects you to a different web through a referral link. An original idea died.

Let's move on...

12. CoinTube:

There are some sites that play a fundamental role in increasing the number of Bitcoin users. CoinTube was one of them. There you could get your first free bitcoins for watching videos. We will all remember the first time that, after tedious hours waiting for our freshly-installed Bitcoin client to synchronize with the network, we watched a video at this place and suddenly some microbitcoins made their way to our digital wallet. It felt almost like magic! This won't happen anymore, since CoinTube has decided to stop paying their users. They still make money through Virool if you visit them and watch the videos they show you, but they won't pay you back in Bitcoins part of their earnings. It's a pity.

Farewell! I'll miss the Weird CoinTube Woman...

13. Oscry:

This place used to give some free bitcoins every day, so it was like a bitcoin faucet you could use each 24 hours. Now it doesn't exist. Somebody took the domain oscry.com and at the moment it only shows ads. I managed to find a very low-quality image of what it looked like in the past:

Hm... All I can see is that it advertised BitVisitor!

14. TenDrawBTC:

Here you had some virtual scratchcards which gave you free bitcoins after, well, scratching them... Now they say they'll be back soon. One month ago TenDrawBTC said the same. I wonder what "soon" means to all these people who take down their site to redesign it!

I'll also return to your site to review it... Soon! Really, really soon!

15. BitStart:

This is a web where you can advertise yourself and earn bitcoins by playing some kind of game, but we don't care about that. We care about the faucet at the bottom of the page. A faucet that doesn't work. At all. And it looks like a clone of the NetLookup faucet... Designed to trick us into spreading the word about BitStart. Meh!

You may input anything, because it doesn't even check whether

it is a real bitcoin address what you write...

Beware Of These Scams!

There are websites that claim to give you free Bitcoins and then don't do it. That's pretty bad; they should stop being online until they work correctly or be forever removed from the Internet. But there's something far worse, and those are the sites that don't only scam you, but actively try to steal your Bitcoins from you. During the past days I've found three examples. Ignore them if you ever stumble upon them!

All your Bitcoins are belong to me!

Since all the following websites seem to have been made by the same person (pictured above), let's give him a name... For example, "Mr. Thief". Before we explore them, let me take my hat...

... My magnifying glass...

... And a nice smoking pipe.

Now we are ready to investigate these scams!

I'm ready!

1. The Bitcoin Faucet!

http://bitcoinfaucet.blogspot.com

This site tries to pass as one more bitcoin faucet. The first time you see it you'll realize something that will make you raise your eyebrows at once: it gives out one whole bitcoin. A hundred million satoshis! Not even the original bitcoin faucet gave such a huge amount.

Suuuuuuureeeee...

And also, the name of the blog creator doesn't inspire too much trust: Scrotum Confiscate. Yup. At least he is honest with his surname: he will try to confiscate your bitcoins.

Cute name...

The site has been redesigned several times during the last two weeks. At the moment I'm writing this it states there's 0.64990 bitcoins in the faucet, but it's had other amounts, like 0.7XXXX if I remember correctly.

Or 0.28374. Or 0.82736. Who cares. This is a scam!

It didn't have the captcha at the beginning. I guess Mr. Thief added it to increase the credibility of his scam. If you input your bitcoin address, solve the captcha and click on "WITHDRAW" nothing happens. It doesn't even reload the page. The button is purely an aesthetic element...

Ooooh, how professional it looks!... But it doesn't work

Let's analyze the bitcoin address it provides us to donate and fill the faucet. If you check out its transaction record you'll see it wasn't very successful during the first days it was created, but during the last week it received several incoming transactions of around 0.27 bitcoins, which Mr. Thief usually gambles away on the SatoshiDice game:

Mr. Thief likes gambling. And he is a loser. Literally. He gambles all he has until he loses everything

It's never received enough to make one whole bitcoin, so it's a lie that it has made three payouts, as it tries to make us believe.

It's especially funny the one made the second of February; the address didn't exist yet at that time!

It's pretty bad that several people fell for this. Hopefully nobody else does. Mr. Thief advertises this site on CoinVisitor, Earn Free Bitcoins and the comment boxes of CoinTube, so beware (I've warned the first two of this scam and they will remove this site from their list).


2. Satoshi Dice

http://satoshidice.blogspot.com

This is another blog made by the same person (Scrotum Confiscate). He goes on a rant about how greedy the SatoshiDice game is, how bad their creators are and how it works. According to him, there are some SatoshiDice addresses that give over 100% of your bet with a 100% chance... I don't even know where I should begin with this one... What the hell is he talking about? How does he know? Why does he share it instead of keeping the secret? This is so ridiculous...

These are the magical addresses

To the Bitcoin newbie, more than the explanation he tries to articulate, what might make them think this is legit is that the three addresses have the characteristic beginning "1dice..." found on all SatoshiDice addresses. They don't know you can make addresses like that with this tool. Let's see how many people fell for this scam:

Transactions from the address

"1dicejYtVvbf4UYjseHrSVuqXdccMCCSD: Min: .01 Max: 1000 Multiplier: 1.004"

If you check out the link above you'll count around 12 people who sent amounts of 0.01 bitcoins or more to the first address. Twelve bitcoin users scammed. And Mr. Thief also gambles away his bounty at SatoshiDice, as always. Let's move on to the next address:

Transactions from the address

"1dice8SBVsgoT1AWMnDzPUerbqvvJonjv: Min: .05 Max: 500 Multiplier: 1.008"

If you count this time you'll see over 20 people scammed. The greater the reward, the greater the chance to fall on the trap, or so it seems. Let's see the last fake SatoshiDice address:

Transactions from the address

"1diceTUvGRqV4vvA4ZtWb1FKBZKvLAWbZ: Min: .1 Max: 250 Multiplier 1.100"

I count 14 people scammed. No wonder he went as far as to advertise his scams on several websites with all the bitcoins he must have stolen this way...

To finish off the only post Mr. Thief made on this blog, he sends all the prospective or already scammed people a sweet message:

Yeah, FUCK YOU too!!!

3. Free 1 BTC

http://free1btc.weebly.com/index.html

This "Free 1 BTC" web says it will give you out 1 BTC when the pool is filled. This time we see an almost full "current pool" which has 0.923359BTC. As if there was a script calculating how much you should donate to fill the pool, you are also informed that 0.066741BTC are needed for that purpose. First mistake that Mr. Thief makes: 0.923359 + 0.066741 = 0.990100, not 1.000000. Mr. Thief failed maths when he was in school; that's why he tries to scam people now.

Basic maths...

Let's analyze the bitcoin address he supplies to send donations. It has been generated with Instawallet, which is ridiculous by itself, since anybody could have access to it and operate with it if he puts the URL right there. You can see it here:

We have the Bitcoin address behind the Instawallet link!

It seems somebody donated 50µ฿. At least. That's just its current balance. Let's use Block Explorer and see its transaction record:

It was used only twice

It received bitcoins once and it sent bitcoins once. It seems at most one person fell into this scam (although the 50µ฿ could also be from some free bitcoins website). Scam unsuccessful. But let's blockexplore the other address Mr. Thief gives us, which according to him received 1฿ on the 28th of January of this year:

The address has never been used!

It's never been used so it could never have received 1฿. This scam is so badly set up that it makes you cry... At least nobody seems to have fallen for it in this case. And that's a good thing.


That's all folks!

Did you enjoy today's article on Bitcoin scam sites? I sure did! And remember kids, don't scam. Not only because it makes those who are tricked by your words feel bad, but because it could give reasons to new Bitcoin users to not trust our favourite cryptocurrency. And less users means less Bitcoin adoption rate and less Bitcoin value. So don't do it! If you need Bitcoins fast, check out the websites below or think about a good idea that will let you earn them honestly!

Websites That Do Not Give Free Bitcoins (II) (3 updates)

Almost a week ago I wrote about some websites that used to give you free bitcoins and don't actually give you anything but ads for your viewing pleasure. Today I'm continuing that post with some more sites I've found which follow a similar philosophy. The list of terror gets extended today so as you can ignore these sites as soon as you spot a link to them on one of the several websites that don't update their information often:

Forget about these... Websites?

6. Paper Coin:


The web Paper Coin "lets you embed Bitcoins or US Dollars into a unique on-time-use disposable QR code that is easily read by any smartphone or webcam-enabled computer". But we don't care about that on this post. We care about its faucet, which claims to give you 700µ฿ for 60 seconds of your time. Three things go wrong here: 1) It doesn't give you a single satoshi; 2) They should put a notice saying the faucet doesn't work anymore or remove it altogether; 3) Nobody takes one full minute to solve a captcha.

Oh! It's a faucet! Let's solve the captcha for a nice reward...

... Damn, you could have told me before!

7. Bitcoin Get:


This hideous CoinTube clone called Bitcoin Get (although admitedly with a better design) tricks you into thinking they'll send bitcoins to your bitcoin address if you watch some of the videos they have in store for you. But they don't. After you watch one of their videos and solve a captcha, they always send you a notice that says you have to fully watch the videos in order to be rewarded... And also that in case you watched the videos until the end, there must be a problem with your browser because they couldn't track your activity correctly. They suggest changing to a different one or turning private browsing on. Hm. Let's see:

It doesn't work with Chrome in normal browsing mode!

It doesn't work with Chrome in private browsing mode!

It doesn't work with Firefox in normal browsing mode!

It doesn't work with Firefox in private browsing mode!

Hmmm... Although it's been years since I last opened Internet Explorer, let's give them the benefit of the doubt:

It doesn't work with Internet Explorer either! Rubbish!

The easiest way to get scammed on the Internet!

Update 1, 19/02/2013: Matthew Cheung commented on my previous post that the issues with Bitcoin Get had been resolved, but it still doesn't work for me. Maybe you should visit them and see if they pay you out...

Update 2, 20/02/2013: It's given me 200µ฿ for the first time. If it works well for a week I'll remove it from this list.

Update 3, 28/02/2013: It only works sometimes (like 20% of the times I watch a video). I'm not wasting my time with this.


8. Faucet Closed:


This was the first bitcoin faucet. Now it's Faucet Closed. It is dry and doesn't give any more bitcoins. It doesn't try to make you think otherwise, though. Still, the notice they have written  ("The Faucet is being fixed; please come back in an hour or three") is too optimistic, since it's been unfixed for a lot of weeks already. It will be forever remembered as the website that helped Bitcoin gain new users during its beginnings in the most efficient way possible: by giving free money away.

Rest In Peace :_-(

9. CoinSlot:


This site used to give you a random amount of bitcoins every day you visited it. Now CoinSlot doesn't exist anymore. Avoid following the links you find pointing to this dead place; it's simply a loss of time. The following image isn't even mine, since they let their domain be taken away and now it only shows ads:

The idea didn't seem bad... It may have been a victim of its own success

10. Bitcoins So:


So this is another site that seems to give you bitcoins for free. Bitcoins So even shows on its homepage a certain amount of coins ready to share with you so as you think it's a legit site. So after introducing your bitcoin address and solving a mathematical captcha, it tells you it has no funds... Why is it so difficult to code a little script that gives you this information before you copy the mathematical operation and paste it on Google Search to get the result? So as you don't lose your time, you know.

So... What?

Websites That Do Not Give Free Bitcoins (3 updates)

When you look for places around the web to get your first free bitcoins, you just cannot avoid to end up in websites which aren't working anymore. They might have given in the past free bitcoins to their visitors and that's what made them get linked on other webs and blogs dedicated to the bitcoin world. But now it's really frustrating going into one of these websites and leaving with empty pockets, sometimes after filling several captchas and exploring the site in search of the free bitcoins. It's also quite amusing to see that even though they don't do their job anymore, most of these webs are still covered with ads. So they get visited, without having content or giving you anything, and get advertising money. That's outrageous, so I'm putting here a partial list of these infernal HTML spawns, so as you can dismiss them inmediately as soon as you see them linked:

These websites suck!

1. NetLookup:


NetLookup used to be some kind of faucet that gave you free bitcoins once per day with even a referral system set up. Now it doesn't work. They've lately added a notice saying there's something wrong with their payment system and that they'll pay retrospectively to everybody that added a Bitcoin address. Let's see if this is true. They would have to send me payments for the last 3 weeks if they kept their word.

"Got it!"? Really? You got nothing!

Update 2, 16/02/2013: Hey, NetLookup, did you give me 6 satoshis to see if I remove you from my list of craptastic websites? Well, that's not gonna work! Try harder!

WTF is this shit?

Update 3, 19/02/2013: Now it's giving me around 1µ฿ per day. When it gives me more than 10µ฿ during seven consecutive days, I'll remove it from this list and review it. Meanwhile, if there is no 4th update under this one, you can consider it continues giving less than 10µ฿ every day, and you may visit the site to get a few satoshis if you feel they deserve your time.


2. Bitcoin Addict:

Bitcoin Addict was another faucet. With jackpots and tons of ads. This one actually tries to make you believe that "You have collected for the day!" when you enter your bitcoin address on their broken system. Well, I've never received a satoshi on the individual bitcoin address I created to receive coins from them, so I don't know. Maybe they mean that we have collected our daily share of ads for the day?

Get lost!

Update 1, 14/02/2013: Their account was suspended two days after this post.

The Internet is a bit cleaner today

3. BitCrate:

This was something quite original: there used to be some crates on this website; you could choose one and keep the bitcoins that contained. However, BitCrate doesn't even show you the crates anymore today. Their creators should pack the web code on a crate and throw it to a river... At least they acknowledge they have run out of bitcoins to give out. And that they'll be back shortly. Suuuuuree...

Don't make me lose my time...

4. BTC Free:

This is another daily faucet. I mean, this was. Now it's nothing more than an empty corpse with some ads where you can play make-believe: introduce your bitcoin address, solve a captcha and feel happy that "Your Bitcoin address was sent succesfully". At least BTC Free has some web design put into it. If I had to review it I'd give it a 0,5/10. And since I'm a hard judge, you've got to take that for what it's worth.

Instead of "Multiple submissions within a 24 hour period will be ignored" it should say "Submission ignored. Have a nice day. Oh, and don't forget to click the ads!"

5. FeedZeBirds:

What happens when you set up a webpage that gives people free bitcoins for retweeting stuff? FeedZeBirds happens. I wonder how this worked in the past, since you can make as many Twitter accounts as you wish... Anyways, now it does nothing at all. You can only see a notice saying somebodything screw up went wrong. Meh.

Nothing to see here...

See more of these websites here.