How the Internet’s Goblins Are Scamming Substack Creators
A cautionary tale that will keep you up all night glaring at your Substack account.
A Quick Flashback Before We Roll On
In the last chapter we unearthed the now-infamous fifty-buck face-palm: a loophole so cheap it lets anyone hijack an abandoned Substack domain for roughly the cost of a movie ticket and popcorn—if you skip the butter. That revelation left plenty of creators clutching their coffee mugs a little tighter. This chapter steps out of the realm of “what could happen” and lands squarely in “what’s already happened.” Spoiler: it isn’t pretty.
Exhibit A: The Crypto Clobbering of Sarah M.
Let’s say we have a rising Substack star who publishes a well-respected finance newsletter for twelve thousand loyal readers and pockets about eight grand a month. Two years ago she toyed with a crypto side-project, decided the vibe wasn’t for her, and trotted off, leaving the domain cryptoinsights.sarahfinance.com wandering the internet like a lost puppy.
Enter our enterprising villain, who paid the bargain-bin fifty-dollar fee, snapped up the orphaned sub-domain, and—poof—launched a near-perfect clone of Sarah’s brand. The impostor fired off breathless emails about a “once-in-a-lifetime” investment, draped every sentence in Sarah’s casual authority, and convinced readers to part with twenty-five thousand dollars before anybody blinked. Three hundred subscribers surrendered their email addresses and personal details in the process.
By the time angry messages reached Sarah’s inbox, the money and the mastermind were both long gone—vanished behind anonymizing services. Two thousand disgruntled subscribers cancelled on the spot. Sarah’s balance sheet took an instant hit; her reputation will need a lot longer to recover.
Sad.
Exhibit B: A Rival’s Wildcard Revenge on Marcus T.
Marcus T. is famous—sometimes infamous—for his razor-sharp commentary on Big Tech. His newsletter commands eighteen thousand readers and about fifteen grand in monthly revenue. But Marcus had a blind spot: during a defunct podcast experiment he enabled wildcard DNS records, which politely tell the internet, “Sure, any sub-domain you type probably belongs to me.”
A competitor—one who had apparently run out of normal hobbies—noticed the oversight and went to work. Overnight, breaking.marcustech.com began pushing bogus exclusives, insider.marcustech.com smeared Marcus’s sources, and premium.marcustech.com erected a paywall whose only real purpose was to vacuum up credit-card numbers.
Within days Marcus found himself uninvited from three high-profile press events and ghosted by several long-time industry contacts who no longer trusted his byline. The damage wasn’t paid in cash so much as credibility—and once that spends, you can’t make change.
Shattering.
Exhibit C: Jennifer K. and the Great Email-List Harvest
Jennifer K.’s lifestyle-and-wellness dispatch attracts twenty-five thousand readers, from weekend yogis to deep-pocketed biohackers. Years earlier she had dabbled in a recipe newsletter, parked its domain, and promptly forgot it existed. Attackers did not forget.
They seized the forgotten space and spun up a slick survey that sounded exactly like Jennifer’s warm, avocado-toast prose. Readers happily donated personal data; some even surrendered credit-card details for “shipping fees” on imaginary freebies. The scam artists compiled swanky dossiers on high-net-worth subscribers, then sold the lists to anyone with spam to sling. Reported downstream losses already top fifty grand, and a handful of subscribers are lawyering up—less zen, more subpoena.
How unfortunate.
What the Bad Guys Look For
If an attacker were browsing a twisted version of Zillow for Substack neighborhoods, they’d hunt for certain telltale signs: creators who are obviously making real money, mailing lists large enough to look like buffet lines, niches where readers rely on expertise—especially finance and tech—and domains seasoned by time, which lend instant gravitas to any scam.
Once inside, they mimic the creator’s tone, sprinkle in “act-now” urgency, and flash trust badges they never earned. Nothing invites a click faster than the fear of missing out on the next big thing—especially if that thing might moon by morning.
A scammer’s favorite flavor when scamming: Crypto. Cryptocurrency scams surface again and again because they’re fast, untraceable, and tailor-made for hype. Dollars flow in seconds, refunds are a fantasy, and the average subscriber is already primed by a steady diet of “get in early” success stories. Impostors happily stage fake influencer interviews, whip up “insider” token drops, and invoke deadlines so tight you’ll pull a hamstring reaching for your wallet.
Trust: The most dangerous exploit of all. Readers forge parasocial bonds with their favorite writers—private jokes in the margins, heartfelt asides about burnt coffee, that sort of thing. Attackers weaponize those bonds by parroting familiar quirks, referencing archive-only anecdotes, and claiming offers “reserved for our O.G. community.” It feels intimate, exclusive, and therefore safe. It is anything but.
Unfortunately, these aren’t basement hackers anymore. Today’s threat actors operate more like scrappy start-ups. They draft pixel-perfect site clones, route traffic through reputable CDNs, hook into legitimate payment processors, and A/B-test subject lines to optimize deceit. The technical bar keeps rising; the entry fee for creators’ mistakes remains stubbornly low.
When Victims Cry for Help
Substack’s support queue isn’t built for breakneck crisis response. Initial acknowledgments can take a couple of days; deeper investigations stretch into weeks. Domain recovery drags on even longer, and while you wait, subscribers continue to bleed out. Refunds? The platform politely wishes you good luck.
The collateral chaos that is Substack. A single hijacking can sow doubt well beyond one newsletter. Reader trust declines across entire niches, media headlines paint the platform as a digital Wild West, regulators start sniffing around, and advertisers quietly shuffle budgets elsewhere. The ripple becomes a riptide.
Sensing trouble before it lands is vital to staying safe on Substack. Tech-savvy creators now monitor DNS changes the way chefs watch boiling sugar: obsessively and with oven mitts at the ready. Subscriber grumbles about suspicious emails or surprise charges may be the first flare. Sudden spikes in cancellations or traffic from far-flung regions you’ve never targeted should set off alarms louder than your neighbor’s midnight leaf blower.
Before We Turn the Page
Do yourself a favor: set up a few Google Alerts for your name and brand; read every oddball complaint instead of brushing it aside; document your domain settings like they’re grandma’s secret lasagna recipe; and, if your newsletter pays the mortgage, think hard about cyber-liability insurance.
Next chapter, we’ll crawl through Substack’s plumbing, examine why a flimsy fifty-dollar checkout masquerades as “security,” and sketch the architectural fixes the platform desperately needs. Until then, keep your wits sharp, your domains tidier than your sock drawer, and please—don’t give me fresh material for the next case study.
This article is based on publicly disclosed security research and is intended to educate creators about cybersecurity risks. If you discover security vulnerabilities in any platform, please follow responsible disclosure practices.
About the Author - An electronic warfare specialist, cybersecurity researcher, and “ethical” hacker striving to expose security vulnerabilities to supercharge the evolution of security.
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Cypher of Little Hakr Research Group
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This thought has never even crossed my mind. Thanks for the insightful article. This is eye-opening and will be something to watch out for as I continue to grow online.
Holy shit, this is exactly what keeps me up at night as a creator! 😅 Just hit 100k followers in the AI/automation space and reading this made me immediately go audit every single domain I've ever touched.
The part about crypto scams hits especially hard - I can't tell you how many of my followers get targeted with fake "AI trading bot" schemes that use similar trust-hacking tactics. It's like these scammers have a playbook: find someone with authority in tech, clone their voice, add urgency, profit.
What's terrifying is how the technical bar keeps rising while the entry cost stays at $50. These aren't basement dwellers anymore - they're running actual businesses with proper infrastructure. Makes me wonder if we need to start treating domain security like we treat password security.
Already setting up those Google Alerts you mentioned. Thanks for the wake-up call - and please keep exposing this stuff. The creator economy needs more people like you watching our backs!