With the crypto-market showing its first signs of life after the longest bear market in its short 10-year history, scammers will be more prevalent than ever. Trying to ride the next wave of money pouring into popular cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum-based Scam bots have been around for as long as there has been an Ethereum network. And for those engaged in the crypto world, you may have noticed that they have started to re-appear.

Read also: Most Common Cryptocurrency Scam Methods All Investors & Traders Should Know

TheNextWeb's author David Canellis took notice that this particular specimen of scammer has not slowed down, even during a crypto winter. They're up to their usual fraudulent antics, but David noticed that they're not quite the same as they once were. They come in an entirely modern design, I suppose a New Year changes all of us, sentient or otherwise.

Now, while they have taken on a new coat of paint, they're pretty much up to the same kinds of antics as yesteryear, with the underlying objective is exactly the same – trick unsuspecting Twitter users into using really suspicious website domains under the auspices that they're participating in a ‘free' giveaway competition for Ethereum.

So how does this particular new year's iteration differ from others?

Well, this kind attempts to direct its victims towards domain names which allege to be handing out 2,000 ETH for [seemingly] free. What do users have to do to capitalize on the deal? All they need to do is ‘verify their Ethereum address' by sending crypto to a wallet address which they provide, either directly, or indirectly managed and used by the scammers.

David refers to this version as “Etherelon scambots circa 2018“. And the underlying idea behind these kinds of bots is that they will not only return your ETH, but they'll also double it. In order to further substantiate its arguments at being legitimate, it offers users the ability to look at an ‘updated' spreadsheet of the various transactions that it has completed thus far. All without a shred of evidence to prove otherwise.

Upon delving into the various addresses that are provided by these scammers by checking the Ethereum block explorer, there is nothing in it at all. No transactions have flowed into it up to this point, and one would sincerely hope that this remains the case.

For such a surreptitious kind of scam, they have an interestingly long pedigree. Starting from pretty ‘humble' con artist origins of taking to social media by masquerading as major personalities such as Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, and even took on a full-fledged mission to take on the identity of the founder of Tesla – Elon Musk.

How much of an influence did these scam bots have on the cryptocurrency world for its major names and influencers? It had enough of an impact to result in these figures adding ‘not giving away free ETH‘ to their various social media usernames. It got to such a degree as to compel Twitter to implement new rules as a way of validating who was legitimate and who was an imposter.

There are plenty of those out there that might despise these ‘new recipe' Ethereum scam bots, others see this as a net positive. With the prevalence of scam- bots making a return, it symbolizes that ETH has finally reached a position where people can confidently buy again. But as for these various scammers – Do not send your Ethereum to those preaching that they will send you ‘free Ethereum.'