How often are people really hacked out of their BTC?

[abel1337]

When i was a newbie, i used to join unlimited airdrops and giveaway because those were valuable at that day.but btc,eth some airdrop required to download their app, some wanted to sign up their website.there they take our information, even ask private key & said they use encrypted system.lots of people were unaware about the value of private key.so they gave their keys and get hacked.i was one of them.maybe those methods aren't useful nowadays but downloading wallet may caused hacked your devices

lol I don't know why people put their private key in exchange for a high chance worthless token. Most of the wallet tells us upon creation not to share the private key so basically, your whole wallet security depends on that private key. Ignorance is a poison especially when it comes to financial means so being knowledgeable about the thing you do is very important also being careful is part of it.

[1714683172]

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[just_Alice]

Has anyone here been hacked and if so, how? We should make sure that we share our stories of being hacked, even if they are painful,  to ensure that people do not repeat other people's mistakes.

Luckily, I've never been hacked, but I take some precautions: all of my passwords and private key phrases are written down on a piece of paper (have many copies, but none of them are digital) and, just in case, I've memorized them all   Also, when withdrawing, exchanging I always double-check the address bar and the receiver's wallet address. Apart from that, I try to store my major savings on Electrum.

But I think there's another problem, that some bitcoin holders (not as few, as I thought) are currently facing - people really do forget/lose their passwords and wallet data, don't they? Take a look at that:

Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent — currently worth around $140 billion — appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/bitcoin-passwords-wallets-fortunes.html

I was really stunned by this news, $140 billion is a lot of money, such a waste  

[KennyR]

Most of the time people end up losing through scams. These days hacks were quite low, and hackers target were upon the large scale business. We can hear the hacks of different exchanges cold storage. Scams are getting promoted easily and making big money out of the people who doesn't have the better understanding about the market and launch of new tokens in the market. Days back saw a project named bitron which is derived from bitcoin + tron = bitron. This is pure scam and people without much analysis invest into it.

[kemoglo]

Most hacked bitcoiner cause of using malware/phishing wallet/software/website, some of them while using electrum and got phished by installing from malicious server the prompts as a notification. While some of them while using exchanges that were hacked.

The lesson is always verify the source/signature of every wallet you want to install on your device. And don't ever put your bitcoin on exchanges for a very long time or as an alternative for wallet.

This guy gets it, most of it happens on windows computers, I know of a guy who lost his on a slightly different way, he had a keylogger on his pc, poor dude was just importing his btc wallet, a few days after he fixes his pc's "slow downs" it was already too late, he lost 3 btc. This was about a month ago, so yeah, BE CAREFUL!

[Tim101]

People try to get me send them btc aft on Twitter 

[bryant.coleman]

When I used to keep my coins in Blockchain.info wallet, I came very close to getting hacked. There were multiple logins from unknown IPs, but fortunately for me, these people couldn't steal my transaction password. So although they got hold of the login password, they could not move the coins. The same happened when I used to keep the coins in my BTC-e wallet. Login was made by the criminal, but for moving the coins email confirmation was needed. The hacker failed to access my email. I immediately notified BTC-e and changed by password. All this happened 5-6 years back.

[KuromaYoichi]

It's usually the casual user that get hacked as they don't seems to put a lot of importance to their password, use the same password for all their email and website accounts, downloading random thing on the internet, and they often click random links on the internet. If you are careful with what you do on the internet then you should be fine. My account never get hacked and i always use authenticator to be more secured.

[Vishnu.Reang]

not hacked but did lose small # of coins after btc-e takedown

Same here.. but exchanges going down can't be compared to someone hacking in to your cryptocurrency wallet and stealing the coins (although in most of the cases the reason for them closing down is getting hacked). I have lost my coins multiple times when exchanges went down. But then, that is one of the risks you take while keeping your coins in exchange wallets. I lost a good number of LTC and some of the other altcoins when Cryptopia went down in 2019. And I am still waiting for any reimbursement from the owners.

[velive08]

Has anyone here been hacked and if so, how? We should make sure that we share our stories of being hacked, even if they are painful,  to ensure that people do not repeat other people's mistakes.

I've been a victim of hacking, their performance was disguised by web phishing. This is very worrying because it could target owners of large amounts of bitcoin in their wallets. So I think you have to be careful for anyone and they should be aware of phishing attacks at any time, always clean your browser and take good care of your computer.

[Mehedi72]

Newbie don't know properly anything about crypto.so they often asking for help.and Its a common mistake for newbie that they give their private key to others for get help, or get some tokens and that is caused they got hacked.the same thing is also happened with me.i asked help from a person of my country, he helped me but later he ran away with my $5k worth btc and never contact with me again. 

[k@suy]

Newbie don't know properly anything about crypto.so they often asking for help.and Its a common mistake for newbie that they give their private key to others for get help, or get some tokens and that is caused they got hacked.the same thing is also happened with me.i asked help from a person of my country, he helped me but later he ran away with my $5k worth btc and never contact with me again. 

Yes newbies are the fist target to be scammed of course if you have a friend  you should teach them a proper way to store their monsy and coins i am sure they will get it. People get scammed if they will trust other person to take care for their funds if they will not do it if course there will be no scam i don't know what is the exact amount of them but out of 10 i think 2 is being scammed nowadays based on what i am seeing in social media posts.

[wxa7115]

Has anyone here been hacked and if so, how? We should make sure that we share our stories of being hacked, even if they are painful,  to ensure that people do not repeat other people's mistakes.

Hacking someone will require great technical knowledge and ability which is why I believe being scammed is way more common, instead of trying to use technical knowledge to try to get to your coins what scammers do is to make all kind of promises about what they can achieve so you send your money to them, and as we know because of the nature of cryptocurrencies once those coins are outside of your wallet and you get a confirmation then it's over and there is no way to recover those coins.

However some of the most common ways in which people get hacked is by installing software from unofficial sources, then the hackers get your seed words or your private keys and they steal your coins, most of the hacks we see are a variation of that so as long as you only install software in your computer that comes from official sources you will be OK.

[sayaya17]

Hacks are common for people who store a lot of bitcoins in a wallet. Therefore, it is better to store  bitcoin not  only in one wallet,
if you have a lot of bitcoins. I think this will slightly avoid the risk of losing a lot of money, as it keeps it in some wallets. Imagine
if you put a bitcoin in one wallet and get hacked, you'll lose it all.

[Ridwan Fauzi]

Has anyone here been hacked and if so, how? We should make sure that we share our stories of being hacked, even if they are painful,  to ensure that people do not repeat other people's mistakes.

Actually I never face the situation but I always aware against it so as I'll find many source to avoid this thing. Especially in this forum, I'll bookmark if there is a solution or some strategy how to avoid being hacked and I'll do all these thing. Until now, I never download anything in my phone including in playstore. I have two phones and I just use one phone for saving my wallet and I don't have any application beside it. I always remember this term an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[GeorgeJohn]

Some people does not with stands the pains because start narrating it will make them crazy, normally people are scamming people everyday, the let time I was scammed it was through investment platform which I don't really know that its was a ponzi scheme, so hacking required them alot of strategies to follow but scamming is easy access, because here people don't really complain of hacking of btc except your email details is issued out to person you know, I think hacking does not threads these period.

[nitrobetting]

Using any exchange has risks of being hacked. Only good practices like 2fa, etc. can ensure the safety of funds being stolen. URL phishing sites are the most common threats to steal personal information from users.

Personally, I have my wallet password encrypted and USB drives. I'm old school and I believe all of your data doesn't have to be uploaded/saved in the cloud. My advice for fellow crypto holders, "Be unpredictable".

[wxa7115]

Hacks are common for people who store a lot of bitcoins in a wallet. Therefore, it is better to store  bitcoin not  only in one wallet,
if you have a lot of bitcoins. I think this will slightly avoid the risk of losing a lot of money, as it keeps it in some wallets. Imagine
if you put a bitcoin in one wallet and get hacked, you'll lose it all.

Having several wallets do not offers as much protection as you think, if all of those wallets are in the same device and the device is infected by a virus or a keylogger then you are going to lose your coins anyway, especially if the hacker is smart and takes his time with the hack.

The only way in which several wallets could help you is if you have them in different devices that way if one of them gets compromised then you do not lose the bitcoin in all your wallets, however if you are holding a lot of bitcoin then you are better off just buying a hardware wallet so you do not have to worry that much about being infected with a virus as for the most part you can still use your hardware wallet in a compromised device without having to worry about losing your coins.

[jerrison]

hacks of btc is not seasonal or regional but with respect to the focus of the hacker, it happens on daily basis if i was to opinionate bt barely a few people come out to say that it has been hacjed as thye know not an laternatiive way to get it back. all should be careful ewith their assets.

[BChydro]

When i was a newbie, i used to join unlimited airdrops and giveaway because those were valuable at that day.but btc,eth some airdrop required to download their app, some wanted to sign up their website.there they take our information, even ask private key & said they use encrypted system.lots of people were unaware about the value of private key.so they gave their keys and get hacked.i was one of them.maybe those methods aren't useful nowadays but downloading wallet may caused hacked your devices

The only reason i avoid any of these airdrops is simply because the task they give is not great if you are not aware of the team and downloading contents from a third party whom you do not trust is a big red flag as you never know what their motive is and hence i never downloaded anything from anyone nor i will sign up in their website let alone provide any private keys thinking i would get a few penny  .

[Lorence.xD]

Most hacked bitcoiner cause of using malware/phishing wallet/software/website, some of them while using electrum and got phished by installing from malicious server the prompts as a notification. While some of them while using exchanges that were hacked.

The lesson is always verify the source/signature of every wallet you want to install on your device. And don't ever put your bitcoin on exchanges for a very long time or as an alternative for wallet.

Pretty much every victim of bitcoin/cryptocurrency related hacks is due to this kind of attack but there is a small percentage that are caught not because they are going into this sites but they are a big mouth and they are arrogant which means that they blabber about how they are hodling bitcoin and how he/she will be rich and such which could be a good thing for attackers because they can just listen to this arrogant people brag about their bitcoin and the fine details without the effort of going for a full technical route.