HOW TO protect yourself from Scammers

[novak hiel]

The only effective way to secure your assets against scammers is by holding your information away from them, never store any thing like secret keys online or backing it up in an email, and also stop being greedy because that is the only thing that will drag you into being scammed.

[1715570591]

1715570591

[Baby Dragon]

I was making a list for my team on how to stay away from Crypto scammers, and thought I would just share it here as well.

Here are the type of Crypto scammers that I have encountered

Type 1. ICO as a SCAM - (More info contributed by: tosindesign)
There are ICOs that are only designed to get your money. Once the ICO is over then the pages are taken off the net and the makers of the ICO disappear with the money. The last case we reported was LoopX, but this is not the only case.

How can you protect yourself?
1. (by: tosindesign) Generally there is no 100% protection here. A good indication for a scam is there is no team mentioned on the website or whitepaper. Although everything is very superficial and promised a lot, but after reading the white paper is not clear how that should be possible.
2. (by: GeckoTrader) One of the best things to do to avoid ICO scamming is to learn and back read all information about that ICO. As they always say " More knowledge is power"
3. (by: GeckoTrader) The team should have been communicating to the community.
4. (by: GeckoTrader) Always they should have an update from their company. If you sense something fishy do not hesitate to ask question from them. In that means you can confirm whether they are legit or just a bunch of scammers.

Type 2. Scammers who sell FAKE COINS (name / coin code is same but coin generating contract is different)
How to protect yourself: Check the contract address of these coins, if it came from the same contract address

Type 3. Social media scammers - Would post like "I will send you 50 ETH if you send me 5"
How to protect yourself: This is an easy one, they all are scammers. Dont even respond.

Type 4: Identity theft scammers - These guys will contact you as CEOs of ICOs or Social celebrities, usually banking upon the names of a famous person
How to protect yourself: Try pinging them from an another ID of theirs (say if scammer pinged you from Telegram, drop them a message over their facebook ID) and ask them to check that message. This would work as a Two-Factor-Authentication for that personality.

Type 5: Malicious code Trojans - Like Wordpress or Chrome plugins, that would use your machine to mine for crypto currencies, using your machine for the same
How to protect yourself: Try not to do plugins or replace them with cloud powered services, OR, Install only trusted plugins, with loads of reviews maybe. I wont be surprised if these trojans take shape of free downloadable games or cracked softwares downloadable for desktop or your mobile.

Type 6: Online Seed Generators (contributed by: tosindesign)
For some wallets (eg the IOTA Wallet) you have to set your own seed. In the case of IOTA, this is an 81-digit password that must consist of uppercase letters and at least one 9. Since some did not want to generate a password themselves, they resorted to online seed generators. These generate you by mouse click an 81-digit seed. However, as it turns out later, a few of these seed generators also stored the generated passwords, The stored seeds were then later used to steal the assets of the investors concerned. You have to know that the seed is something like the master key that allows all credits to be transferred. A thief does not even have to have access to your computer on which the wallet is installed. The seed is enough to access your balance on another computer.

How can you protect yourself?
Never use an online seed generator! When generating an 81-digit seed, all you have to do is push 81 random keys on your keyboard.

Type 7: Phishing website attempts (contributed by: tosindesign)
Scammers would copy exact replica of the websites (wallets, exchanges) and try to get you to login, thereby recording you password. For example, the page Blockchain.info was copied to get the logins. You have to know that Blockchain.info also offers a wallet service where Wallet could save your bitcoins. If Google users searched for “Blockchain info” in some countries, they ran a Google ad that led to Blockchaina.info, a cheat site that has nothing to do with Blockchain.info. The site was a 1: 1 copy of Blockchain.info and was only designed to get login information from users. There are also similar attempts to MyEtherwallet.com and other sites.

How can you protect yourself?
Never click anywhere on a link to a page where you want to log in. The best way is to bookmark the pages and just go over the web pages. In addition, you should always look for the SSL encryption. There will not be a page that stores important data from you and is located at http: //. All pages should now be encrypted SSL and have a https: // domain (although the pages can also be accessed at http: // they will redirect to https: //). The SSL certificates will also show you every browser, for example by a small lock symbol.


Type 9: Used Ledger Nano (contributed by: tosindesign)
At ebay and in other marketplaces there are always offers to buy the Ledger Nano a bit cheaper. This is particularly interesting now, where the Ledger Nano S is sold out and will be available again in one month. There have been cases in the past when users bought a used ledger on ebay and the seed from the ledger was already filled out. Anyone who has not owned a ledger to date will hardly register the difference. Of course, the previous owners have also noted the seed in these cases, which then allows them to get access to the crypto currencies that the new owner stores on the Ledger Nano S.  

How can you protect yourself?
If you want to use a hardware wallet like the Ledger Nano S, buy it directly from the manufacturer and make sure that it is still original packed. The enclosed note on which you can write down the seed should never be filled.

Type 10: Airdrops that ask for personal information (contributed by: StarKay)
There are hyped up airdrops that may ask for KYC information, that may end up being used by scammers / hackers.

How to protect yourself:
Think of your personal information as an investment as well. Research who you are giving your information to and why that ICO will need it

Type 11: Identity theft via Social Media - (contributed by: darkangel11)
You have to realize what they want from you. In the end it's always your money, while in the process they may want some personal data, a phone number, whatever they can get into.

How to protect yourself: Never willingly give anything. Don't share your real social media accounts with random people, keep your email addresses to yourself and if you have to use them make sure to have burner emails. What are burners? Not necessarily emails created for every forum and project. Just emails that don't contain your personal data and that you're not using for online shopping, banking and so on.

Please add more below, or share your story.

I have experience his kind of situation before because I share my private key to my internet friend, I trust too easliy but now I learned from that mistake and trust no one unless its my family. We really need to be careful of scammers they are everywhere.

[cerahb01]

It sounds like that the idea of avoiding scammers is as easy as clicking close button on a pop-up spam messages. But it is not. Getting to know the details on what to do and the case study of what have been done earlier by the scammers will be much of a help. I myself will likely identify the type 3 and type 4 easily. Thank you for the sharing!

[Lynh kolh]

i think it is very simple,you don't believ anyone on telegram and stranger,you don't give you wallet for anyone,if you buy ICO you only buy on the website of this ICO,no admin pm you with hight bonus,when you click strange link,you have to stop,with me you don't give your money for any stranger

[delightme]

Your personal information is valuable and you need to take precautions to protect it when you are online, especially when you use social media sites. you can also protect yourself from scammers by  Creating and using passwords. Passwords protect your personal information, so it is important to create strong passwords and change them regularly.

[Olayinka225]

This's really a good write up
But what I know is that one may not be scammed sometimes if someone is not trying to get a virtually what doesn't even implies as been the truth. Like if someone is trying to offer what one should know it can't never be true and existed.

[jcmansah7]

One of the menace in crypto is scamming and day in and day out most crypto noob and even sometimes experienced crypto enthusiast get scammed. I believe this information would go a long way to enlighten may people out there about how to stay away from the schemes of scammers. Stay safe people there are bad nuts among us.

[libert19]

There is one more where people sell BTC or other crypto for paypal money at premium rates. Scammers charge back after receiving BTC and since its BTC transaction, you can't directly tell PayPal team, and usually case is won by the scammers.

[npiappes]

I think to prevent from being scammed you should only transact with people you already knew.

[mornabo]

I think to prevent from being scammed you should only transact with people you already knew.

I think it's not a good idea, isn't the internet function to connect to people you don't know outside? and how narrow the world is, if you only transact with people only you know

Your personal information is valuable and you need to take precautions to protect it when you are online, especially when you use social media sites. you can also protect yourself from scammers by  Creating and using passwords. Passwords protect your personal information, so it is important to create strong passwords and change them regularly.

and make sure you use a different password for each account, because there are many phishing sites that you don't know, and maybe you have already put you email and password there?

[naruto7676]

Good advice lot of scammer's also spreading in bounty ico and selling their token if you pay first they gonna give the token. Probably all selling tokens need buy/sell in the market and have a Legit escrow for doing this.

[Carna]

Thank you for all those advice. I recently met some people that I couldn't trust on 100%. But now I know

[Peacemaker1994]

Very much helpful thread toward the fight against scammers which has infested cryptocurrency but you fail to note that greed is a personal problem that also leads to one being scammed

[Aponkye1]

Great job @OP because the information provided would help other new members avoid some lame schemes of scammers and one thing that i really urge people in here to observe is never accept offers in pms other than official channels because most of them turn out to be scammers. We really need to find a way to get rid of all these scammers because they are dragging the name of crypto in mud.