Whatever involves money involves a high amount of risk. Money has turned into such a vanity ever since the known history of man that it has killed and slaughtered their own kin to acquire a few extra monetary asset. And with the heavy intermingling of the Internet with money, frauds and scams have always been on the major front. There is something about the hoarding of money that is so appealing to human nature that it turns it into a greedy, and in many cases a criminal personality.
That being said, the Internet is jam packed with such personalities who would be ready to dupe you of your money without a second thought. And when it comes to your hard earned money, it is very important for you to secure yourself cozily under layers and layers security so that these heartless scams cannot rid you of your money. Even with a highly secure and decentralized platform for cryptocurrencies, one can just never be too careful when it comes to their money.
Therefore, it is only wise to secure yourself and keep your safe from such crypto scams and given here below are few tips to help you do just that.
Be on the lookout for phishing scams
Of course one of the most widespread method of trying to lure someone into anything money related has been spam emails. Time and again we receive such emails and there have been numerous reports of people crying about losing their money to these. The only wise thing to do is completely ignore such emails and steer clear of them. Of course anyone claiming to be the owner of a buttload of Bitcoins and willing to share the profits with you is shady. Of course no one wants to give you their money away for free, via emails nonetheless.
There are several scammers who even go to the length of impersonating the government and or the crime branch to threaten you that they’d drag you to the court and initiate legal action if information regarding your crypto account or digital wallet is not shared with them immediately. Rest assured, that these are scams and no government authority or even private companies would ask for such actions over an email. Simply delete these emails the minute you receive them.
Fake digital wallets
What better way to get people to trust you than posing as a trustworthy wallet service? Always and always go for well known and well trusted names when it comes to choosing a service for your digital wallet. You would not want a site posing as a wallet where you would store your coins and the website would just rip you off your private keys and run away with all your tokens. Do not make random decisions when choosing a wallet for yourself. Be on the lookout for such lesser known shady looking services which offer you cheaper or almost free service for no benefit of theirs.
If their in fact is a new service which looks promising, wait out for others to check it out and build credibility. Have patience. Moreover, famous websites with a huge user base generally attract imitators who try to take advantage of the brand value and redirect users to their fake websites. Always look for the ‘Secure’ tag in the website url. Usually, these are also accompanied with a ‘lock’ symbol which furthers ensures the authenticity of the website. For added protection, go a step ahead and enable 2 factor authentication. Do not be lazy.
The so called ‘get rich quick’ scams: Fake ICOs and Ponzi schemes
Sometimes even unintentionally, the creators of a brand new coin ask you to join forces with them to propel the next big coin into the market which many a times, is just pure junk. When looking into working towards such a thing, make a few wise lookins before jumping into the venture. A copied white paper, unusually high ambitions, the complete team involved or half of it has been kept under wraps, a contradiction in what is being said and what is actually being done, a hurry in executing all the steps, no proper well structured answers to important questions, are a few key red alerts to look out for to avoid such scams.
Another red alert sign to beware of are ponzi schemes. People claiming to help you make huge profits within weeks by just holding a few worthless tokens. You might see rapidly changing numbers in your account but actually claiming them would turn out to be impossible since the pages would suddenly turn unresponsive. Steer clear of too good to be true deals and offers, and always check whether its a registered corporation or not. Even the slightest discomfort should make you stay away from such entities.
A few extra tips
To secure yourself overall, here are a few extra steps you could carry out. Generate strong alphanumeric passwords, including upper and lower cases characters and numbers and symbols. Do not make them obvious guesses or song lyrics or your pet’s names. These are way too easy to crack than you could imagine. Use cold storage. Cash out your tokens regularly and only keep a minimum permissible amount in them. The rest should be transferred to a hardware wallet. Maintain plausible deniability and keep certain data hidden away from the public eyes.
Moreover, go an extra step ahead and if you encounter any such fraudulent sites, flag them and do your bit for the crypto community. A little goodness goes a long way. So do your part, and be safe out there.
