Another day another friend scammed. 800 dollars meant for presale tokens sent to a very convincing replica site never to be seen again.
The Cryptoverse is a dangerous place. I know some very smart and security conscious people that have fallen victim to the increasingly sophisticated and creative scammers. It just takes just one momentary lapse of concentration and you’re wallet is emptied.
I’ve been moving crypto almost daily for 5 years now and I’ve never been scammed and I intend to keep it that way.
So here’s the steps I take to keep my funds as safe as possible.
1 - Use a cold wallet. In crypto you get hot and cold wallets. Hot wallets are connected to the internet and vulnerable to attacks whereas cold (hardware) wallets are not. With a cold wallet your private keys never leave the device so for any transaction to be approved someone needs to physically posses the wallet.
When setting up the device write down your keys/mnemonic phrase, make two copies and store them in two separate and secure locations. As convenient it is never take a photograph from a device that goes online or save them on the cloud.
2 - Use a VPN (a decentralised VPN for the really paranoid like me) and secure internet connection. No transferring crypto connected to a public wifi.
3 - Bookmark every site you use to do anything crypto and only access them that way. No hitting links from emails and no Googling exchange names. There have been cases of indistinguishable scam sites paying to be ads at the top of Google searches.
4 - Don’t click on links from people you don’t know and trust. This limits the chance of a phishing attack or being sim cloned.
5 - Don’t store large funds on exchanges. If you are for staking purposes and there’s no non-custodial wallet option, make sure 2FA is set up and change your password regularly. Although it’s not impregnable it will seriously reduce the risk of any security breach.
6 - Use various wallets. Having your funds split over various wallets means if the unthinkable happens then at least you’re only losing a percentage of your funds.
7 - Delete any pictures of Passports/Drivers licence’s you may have saved from doing KYC.
8 - Use Anti virus software on all devices.
And finally, ignore todays USD value and treat all your coins as if they are worth millions. You never know what the future holds for that random coin you bought on a whim. I know someone that lost a hard drive with a LOT of Dogecoin on it. It didn’t hold huge value at the time but turned into 8 figures at one point!!
I thought I had everything covered but No 7 on this list was something I was advised of only very recently. Total oversight on my part so there’s always room for improvement. So if there’s something anyone thinks I’m missing let me know!!