Today we will look into some things you need to do or avoid doing to keep your crypto safe. There is a wide range of things scammers and so on will do to get hold of your crypto. I will hopefully in this article help you reach a better understanding and security. However i’m far from an expert in the area.
ALSO READ: Fake Token Sales And How To Avoid Them.
Wallet Private Key And Phrases
As i also have written in earlier articles about scam, the most common way people loses their funds is through telegram/discord. Most of the time the scammer have fake accounts acting like a projects admin or “support desk”. They have secondary accounts sitting in telegram groups of projects and forward peoples messages that have issues.
Then the fake admin will private message the user acting like they want to help. However all they want you to is “verify” your wallet on a random website. This website will either ask for your private keys or key phrases. The website can also have you download a file which most likely is a virus to steal all your walleet info and perhaps account informations.
There is a reason why all project admins have “Will never DM/PM you first” and that is purely because of that reason. Generally if an “admin” message you first in private they are 100% a scammer. Also so far no project have special accounts called support desk and so on.
The only thing you can do is ignore these and report and block them and forward them on telegram to @notoscam.
Websites And Unverified Links
There is a ton of fake website versions and token sales out there of projects. Even after the projects token sale is over you will find these. The scammers know there always will be someone who doesn’t know and will fall for these websites. Thats what i try avoiding with the articles i’m writing.
Always verify the domains, often scammers use domains close to the real one but just ending in other TLD’s (.info .sale and so on). You can always try search coinmarketcap.com and coingecko.com for the crypto project. It will often have all website and official links.
Also there you most likely will also find their telegram and other official channels where you can ask for more info and verify.
ALSO READ: How To See If A Site Is Scam.
Having A Good Anti Virus
Its a must to have a good anti virus program on your device. I do personally use Malwarebyte on my PC and other devices. Not only do they have a free version they are also however much cheaper per device and lisence leght. One year for one pc is $53. There is of cause packages for multiple devices. The longer period the cheaper per year. (prices may differ from country to country).
However Malwarebyte from my experiance do a much deeper search and find more then other anti virus programs and in the pro version have full web protection against pishing sites and bad downloads and much more.
I do recommend you go to the website and read more up on it.
Pishing Emails
Pishing emails are something we all get. Your email are publicly out there if a website you used have been hacked. Most pishing emails comes from people buying hacked information on the dark web. Most pishing emails are sent from hacked emails or email lists using a random noreply email.
You should always check who the sender is of the email. I have often gotten pishing emails from coinbase. However these emails was sent from a personal email or a noreply email that wasn’t the coinbase doimain.
Every email provider let you see the email that you got the email from, so always check the email who sendt before you click anything within the email.
Often you can also see that the design of the email is way different from the normal official emails from the different services.
So always check everything within the email as well if its an email saying a transaction have been done without your approval. Then login to your account in your browser without clicking in the email to verify these informations which are often very untrue.
Common Sense
As i said i am no expert in the field. However i use a little bit of common sense when it comes to these things and follow the simple things above. I have never lost a wallet or an account to these pishing and scammers. Also a good idea is to use 2FA in form of Google Authenticator or Authy to add an extra layer of security to your accounts. You can find thesse apps on app store.
Also if you have to download wallets or apps from the company always follow direct links from official websites, since sometimes you will find fake apps too on google playstore.
However if you liked this article and it helped you adding more security to your daily life. Then please share it with your friends since it will help me a ton.
