How NOT To Get Scammed

[Drai]

I believe that every good lesson starts with a good story and on this note, I want to tell you about the experience I had that made me cautious of "Get rich quick" schemes online especially those pertaining to Cryptocurrencies.


I discovered Bitcoin in early 2013 and although I didn't take it seriously at first, I was earning little money from it doing tasks online (pay for view, faucets and such), I took it more as a hobby and never intended on selling the bitcoin, I just knew in my heart that it would do great so I wanted to accumulate as much as possible without having to spend my money buying it (this was before I got into mining), fast forward to 2015 when the money doubling schemes were everywhere, I kept seeing adverts online and even though I knew better, I decided to invest in one of them (Avabitcoin) with the coins I got from my early days of discovering bitcoin, Avabitcoin was a platform where you invest bitcoin and they supposedly invest it and return profits to you on a daily basis, I decided to take the risk and invested for the first day, got back my money plus 12% profit, and greed overtook me and I did kept doing it for 2 more weeks before they vanished with my funds. I kept going all in even when I had already doubled my money.

If you want to avoid getting scammed online, you just have to follow the following:

Greed: Greed has led a lot of people straight to rekt, like my story above would have told you, I couldn't resist the pull of greed even when I had doubled my funds.

HYIPs: When it looks too good to be true, then it's probably too good to be true, when you see any investments that promise high yield returns, please stay far away from them, when you see genuine projects that offers returns, most of their returns are so low, some of them are average of 10% per annum and it's a wonder that we see platforms offering 10% and above in a day and we gladly jump straight into rekt, like I said, if it sounds too good to be true, then it's too good to be true.

FOMO: If not for the hype that Avabitcoin generated, I would not have invested in it in 2015, learn how to DYOR and avoid what others have to say about projects they seem to support, infact your mindset should be that everybody is trying to rip you off so if you always look at every hyped project with that mindset, you would have a clearer picture of the project without the blindfold of FOMO.

Rushing: Avoid rushing into any investment because you heard it's paying others, one of the virtues of a Cryptocurrency investor is patience, Cryptocurrency investments are high risk investments and you have to treat it like gambling, never invest more than you can afford to lose, never go all in on any project no matter how good it looks.


EDIT:
Click on random websites: Many airdrop websites you see these days asking for personal details are fake and many of them are just clever ways to steal your private details and use it to steal your funds, be careful of the links you click and if possible, bookmark your sensitive websites (the ones that need private information like private keys and passwords) so that you wouldn't fall for a clone website.

Use new wallets: We can all remember the recent incident that happened with satowallet where the wallet stopped working and users lost a sizable amount of funds, we should stick to the existing and trusted wallets instead of just jumping into any random wallets swe see online, many of them don't have your best interest at heart.

Repeat Passwords:  I was just surfing through the forum a few minutes ago and saw a post where a guy managed to hack an ICO website and contacted the admins and the admins just don't care, never repeat passwords in two websites so that if a hacker manages to get their hands on one of your passwords, they would not be able to affect your funds in other platforms.

Please try to include telegram scams on your list, they are trending big now and almost all newbies from india have fall victim to this scam tricks, scammers steal project teams image and use a near identity name too, for example a legit project team member can  go by @fisher as the username and scammers will change the name to @flsher with same profile image to give you good offer, if you don't check very well you will think its legit.

If you have any similar experience, please kindly share it, it might help others (especially the newbies to avoid being scammed by shady projects out there and if I see good suggestions, I would edit this post and add them as well.
Seen some awesome answers and I would be adding them soon, keep the suggestions coming.

[pgbit]

If you have the urge to invest anywhere, why not get into lending in reputable platforms instead, these days even reputable exchanges now offer this service so if you have the urge to do something, just lend your Cryptocurrencies ,I have discovered that some people just feel like putting their crypto funds somewhere so thet they can feel like their are doing something, never fall for this urge please.

[otto93]

These are relevant informations that can really be followed to avoid been scammed. To be scammed on the internet really cuses a lot of mixed feelings on oneself and it takes some fols like forever to come out of the loss

[OasisDre]

FOMO is same thing as rushing, fear of missing out can make you rush to exchange to buy a particular coin or token but the most dangerous one is greed, not knowing when to stop is bad in every aspect of life but at the same time greed has its purpose too

[Baby Dragon]

Some of us can be easily deceive by their sweet lies like we don't even think about it before making decision and that is the reason why we end up felling remorse about it. I've had experience it, it makes curious and interested of course who doesn't want to earn huge profit in easiest way? I don't have enough understanding before about safety and security about scams that's why I lose some of my money. I have learned a lot of things after that incident and now I was able to overcome different problems because my experiences help me to realize my mistakes.

[Greed Dev]

I think we need to add one more thing, which is the unprofessional idea.
For fraud projects, they often offer roadmaps and limited visibility. Their whitepaper only focuses on the price of tokens and big discounts and some limited information about the market. That is also a way to identify fraud.

[alexsandria]

Greed is just a root of all it all. Everybody want to get rich of course; searching stuff online, doing some outdoor activities and whatsoever. But such greed to money stands as a wall between you, passion and knowledge that everyone tend to forget to do and think of beforehand. They just search and try those things alike on what they have seen forgetting to ask themselves why they should do this, what is more into this, and where am I getting at in this before participating. Leaving greed would be a major key to avoid scam.

[Wysi]

I think we need to add one more thing, which is the unprofessional idea.
For fraud projects, they often offer roadmaps and limited visibility. Their whitepaper only focuses on the price of tokens and big discounts and some limited information about the market. That is also a way to identify fraud.

This was a thing of past as nowadays the scam projects looks so neat with  clear white paper and road map as they just hire people over this forum itself or fiverr to do these tasks. We need to use our experience and idea behind the projects as most of the scam projects comes up with unrealistic ideas and we could do verification of their team member and their previous projects.

[Ailmand]

Remember the bitconnect scam, this is the best example of all the lists that was mentioned. A lot of people got scammed because of FOMO and greed, the project really is attractive because of their income plan, but if you will look at it deeply it is too good to be true. I have seen a lot of people breaking down in YouTube saying they have invested all they got in there and etc. That is why people should be careful when investing and must really do their research.

[angrybirdy]

Remember the bitconnect scam, this is the best example of all the lists that was mentioned. A lot of people got scammed because of FOMO and greed, the project really is attractive because of their income plan, but if you will look at it deeply it is too good to be true. I have seen a lot of people breaking down in YouTube saying they have invested all they got in there and etc. That is why people should be careful when investing and must really do their research.

Investors become greedy, even after knowing that this is a scam, most of its investors still continue their activity.
They focus more on their possible profit than securing their money. Instead of getting away with this project, investors chose to close their eyes and expected too much from the project.

[confreslamp]

Thanks for posting, hopefully newbies will be aware. In my opinion greed is the biggest problem, because when hunters see a new bounty that promises to allocate 2 million USD as rewards, they are all starting to promote it without even checking the project.

[dirgayeah]

According my experience before joining in this forum is Greed and fomo. At 2017 before bitcoin reach their ATH, I was trapped with fomo moment although that make me profit (very rare moment). I also ever be greed for holding altcoin, and that make me lost approx $3000.

[Sri rahayu]

Thanks for posting, hopefully newbies will be aware. In my opinion greed is the biggest problem, because when hunters see a new bounty that promises to allocate 2 million USD as rewards, they are all starting to promote it without even checking the project.

I don't think it's about bounty, and regarding projects that promise a lot of prizes, I think it needs to be suspected for now. Op is just not satisfied with the small profit, therefore, this will be a lesson so that we may not be greedy in taking advantage. Imo

[Drai]

Remember the bitconnect scam, this is the best example of all the lists that was mentioned. A lot of people got scammed because of FOMO and greed, the project really is attractive because of their income plan, but if you will look at it deeply it is too good to be true. I have seen a lot of people breaking down in YouTube saying they have invested all they got in there and etc. That is why people should be careful when investing and must really do their research.

You just reminded me of this, The Bitconnect scam is probably one of the worst heists in the history of Cryptocurrency,t he sad fact is that when something similar came up after the crash of Bitconnect, some people were still investing in the hopes of recouping their loses which only led to more loses.

[Aabcde]

I have been exposed to FOMO in 2017 when IGNIS snapshot airdrop. At that time I bought NXT for $ 0.05 and kept holding until NXT reached ATH, because I wanted to get IGNIS. It turned out that when IGNIS was distributed, NXT dropped sharply. If I sell NXT without waiting to get IGNIS, I can get around $4000 at the time. But only about $1500 that I finally got. But, that's life, we have the right to choose and bear each of them.

[kanayaTabitha]

I would add one more.
Don't visited random website that has crypto airdrops on there , or don't click on random links that people shared or people sent to you because it might be contains malware that can track your wallet password.
So be careful on surfing in cryptocurrency websites, because there are some of them contains malware and it will steal your personal private key or passwords

[DabsPoorVersion]

Remember the bitconnect scam, this is the best example of all the lists that was mentioned. A lot of people got scammed because of FOMO and greed, the project really is attractive because of their income plan, but if you will look at it deeply it is too good to be true. I have seen a lot of people breaking down in YouTube saying they have invested all they got in there and etc. That is why people should be careful when investing and must really do their research.

You just reminded me of this, The Bitconnect scam is probably one of the worst heists in the history of Cryptocurrency,t he sad fact is that when something similar came up after the crash of Bitconnect, some people were still investing in the hopes of recouping their loses which only led to more loses.

This was the most terrible investment I've experienced before. Still continue to invest even after knowing that it is a scam. I've tried to retrieve my losses, and started to make quick decisions without further thinking of possible things to happen after my investment.
Greed brings me to that investment, even after realizing the situation, I still do not believe my instinct.

[Meowth05]

I believe that every good lesson starts with a good story and on this note, I want to tell you about the experience I had that made me cautious of "Get rich quick" schemes online especially those pertaining to Cryptocurrencies.

I discovered Bitcoin in early 2013 and although I didn't take it seriously at first, I was earning little money from it doing tasks online (pay for view, faucets and such), I took it more as a hobby and never intended on selling the bitcoin, I just knew in my heart that it would do great so I wanted to accumulate as much as possible without having to spend my money buying it (this was before I got into mining), fast forward to 2015 when the money doubling schemes were everywhere, I kept seeing adverts online and even though I knew better, I decided to invest in one of them (Avabitcoin) with the coins I got from my early days of discovering bitcoin, Avabitcoin was a platform where you invest bitcoin and they supposedly invest it and return profits to you on a daily basis, I decided to take the risk and invested for the first day, got back my money plus 12% profit, and greed overtook me and I did kept doing it for 2 more weeks before they vanished with my funds. I kept going all in even when I had already doubled my money.

If you want to avoid getting scammed online, you just have to follow the following:
Greed: Greed has led a lot of people straight to rekt, like my story above would have told you, I couldn't resist the pull of greed even when I had doubled my funds.

HYIPs: When it looks too good to be true, then it's probably too good to be true, when you see any investments that promise high yield returns, please stay far away from them, when you see genuine projects that offers returns, most of their returns are so low, some of them are average of 10% per annum and it's a wonder that we see platforms offering 10% and above in a day and we gladly jump straight into rekt, like I said, if it sounds too good to be true, then it's too good to be true.

FOMO: If not for the hype that Avabitcoin generated, I would not have invested in it in 2015, learn how to DYOR and avoid what others have to say about projects they seem to support, infact your mindset should be that everybody is trying to rip you off so if you always look at every hyped project with that mindset, you would have a clearer picture of the project without the blindfold of FOMO.

Rushing: Avoid rushing into any investment because you heard it's paying others, one of the virtues of a Cryptocurrency investor is patience, Cryptocurrency investments are high risk investments and you have to treat it like gambling, never invest more than you can afford to lose, never go all in on any project no matter how good it looks.

If you have any similar experience, please kindly share it, it might help others (especially the newbies to avoid being scammed by shady projects out there.

Also avoid engaging in transaction without knowing anything. Avoid clicking some random link because it could cause downloading of malware that could possibly penetrate your system and obtain your precious data such as passwords. You could also do make some research first the project you were going to engage in, check their roadmap and make a technical analysis out from it.

[BlacksmithCorporation]

I think learning and gaining experience is also important to avoid fraud. Newbies often have no knowledge of what they're about to face, so they are the most vulnerable subjects.

[taufik123]

I once invested in one project because of FOMO. The project is discussed by everyone in the group and every day there will be news that appears. I am still holding and analyzing, then I am interested in investing some of my funds in it. When the token sale is complete, just wait for listing on the exchange. But until now the project has not been listed anywhere and tokens have become junk.