Are you confused about choosing between Eightcap and eToro as your broker? Then you have a third option — eighttoro — which, of course, is a fraudulent platform with no association with legitimate brands.

Two Brokers, One Clone

The Cyprus financial market watchdog has issued a warning against eighttoro, flagging it for not being authorised by the regulator. The warning also named four other platforms.

The eighttoro name draws attention as it appears to be a combination of Eightcap and eToro, two legitimate brokers. Its logo also resembles eToro’s logo. The scammers may be attempting to benefit from the popularity of these legitimate platforms.

Although it appears that the hosting service provider has blocked the fraudulent website, its archived version was in Russian, indicating that it targeted Russian speakers.

The archived version of eighttoro shows that it claimed to offer access to more than 7,000 assets across forex, stocks, cryptocurrencies and other asset classes.

It also claimed to have 350,000 users globally, which is higher than many established brands.

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The Scam Industry

The impersonation of brokerage brands has now reached an industrial scale. According to a 2023–2024 report by Akamai, more than 36 per cent of all traffic to typosquatted domains targets financial institutions, making finance the most abused sector online.

The CEO of Pepperstone, Tamas Szabo, also recently stated that his broker is taking down scam websites and fake social media accounts impersonating the firm almost every day.

Brokers are not alone. Regulators, including CySEC, are repeatedly issuing warnings about the widespread impersonation of their websites, social media accounts and even staff members.

In an interview, CySEC Chair Dr George Theocharides admitted that scammers will always be one step ahead of regulators, despite warnings and enforcement efforts.

“Our responsibility is to make it as difficult as possible for them to do so,” he said, referring to the scale of financial scams. “But will the problem ever completely disappear? No, it won’t. There will always be sophisticated scammers and fraudsters who find ways to exploit the system.”

This article was written by Arnab Shome at www.financemagnates.com.Retail FXRead More

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