How to Protect your Crypto from Scammers & Hackers

We often hear the news about scams and hacks in the cryptocurrency market but most of us think that it's not going to happen to us because hackers or scammers will not find us since we are not the top holders. It's really not good and I wish no one in this world go through this situation but the reality is just different. You do not know at what moment we get involved in this and some hacker can steal the money from our wallet. Everyone thinks the same that they will not be hacked or scammed but I believe that these hackers use a high level of technology and they can do it easily if they want. Even the biggest exchanges are hacked in the past so as a user we cannot predict and be completely sure that we will never be part of this.

I have gone through a similar experience so I know that how painful it is and this is why now I am extremely careful with my digital holdings. I had this bad experience when I started with steem in 2018 and I never thought that I can be hacked but it is a bitter reality that I had to deal with. Fortunately I was able to recover my account and I did not had a big balance in my wallet so the loss was not big but trust me the mental harassment that I had gone through was really painful. That was the first and last incident with me and since then, I have been following all possible ways to protect my funds. I simply avoid any type of communication or interaction that looks fishy to me. Even I do not want to be part of any airdrop that can give me free money if it does not look genuine. My thought process is simple that, I can't afford to lose the money that I have instead I am okay to lose what can come to me as part of an airdrop or giveaway at the stake of risk so I simply ignore it.

If we look around carefully then we can see that lot of people are trying to scam the innocent people in various ways. I have seen many examples where people got scammed because they shared their information in the public domain and trusted the other person who was trying to help but actually that person was trying to steal the funds/information. One of the most popular way is when someone asks for help on social media. Scammers try to take the advantage of this situation and try to scam the person who needs help but we should not trust anyone who is offering the help or sharing any link. I don't think any project will be asked to click on a different link that is not official so before we do this we must ensure that the link that has been shared by the person is genuine. In some social messaging platforms are telegram and discord, where a lot of scammers share the link and the best way to avoid such communication from people we don't know.

So the question is how can we avoid this situation and what are the steps that we can follow to ensure more safety of our funds against these scammers and hackers?

Enable 2FA - added layer of security

Nowadays most exchanges and social media platforms provide the option to use second-level authentication which is helpful because this way we add another layer of security. It's highly recommended to use it and even with the email account we use, so that if someone gets access to our password then also it will not be easy for that person to access the information because second-layer authentication will not be possible. If something is still cracked by the hacker then that is an exceptional case but in the normal scenario, it is not easy to access if second-level authentication is enabled.

Use hardware wallet

There have been many scenarios in the past when the wallets are hacked and to avoid the situation I believe the hardware wallet is the best solution. This is a physical wallet that we can carry there and keep in a safe place and the good thing is that it is not connected to the internet so no hacker or scammer can have access to this device. I have never heard about any incident where the hardware wallet is hacked but here we need to be careful with our keys or password. Although hardware wallet is never had as far as I am aware but usually people lost passwords and because of that they lose access to their funds as well so it is important to keep the key or password in a safe place where you can have easy access.

Fake AirDrop and Giveaways

There are so many people doing give away and airdrops on social media and they ask us to share the information and they even share assemblings on which they expect us to click. I believe that most of these are fake and we should not believe in them. In my experience, I can say that if the project is genuine then you will not be asked to share anything that can be called personal information for the airdrop or giveaways. In today's time, data is valuable which means it is precious, and through this way, people try to get the information so that they can scam people or even hackers can get access to our money. I am not saying that we just need to avoid all but we need to be careful before clicking on any link and someone asks us to for the money then just avoid and ignore the offering because this may lead to monetary loss. If anything looks not genuine or suspicious then just avoid it and move on.

Information security

We should not share our personal information in public because we never know how this will be used. Technology is advanced and hackers are also using highly advanced technology to hack systems and even wallets so it is always advisable not to share anything that is not required to share in social media. Especially the email id and some contact details because through this way hackers get access to profiles and which is another sort of risk that we may face. Crypto is growing and the community is spreading across the word but at the same time lord of people on YouTube try to share some advice but I believe we should not rely on them. They often create their own telegram groups and ask people to join but I would say just avoid them because it's better to trust our own research rather than someone else work which might be a loss-making decision.

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As I mentioned that I have been the victim of the scam and also I wish no one has to deal with the situation because it is not just painful but even frustrating. If we follow the above steps then we can keep ourselves safe and secure from scammers and hackers. Its our money that we earn throuhg hard work so we should not give any chance to anyone to get it away from us. At the hive, the good thing is that we can convert our tokens to hive power and conversion takes 13 weeks time. This is very good from the security point of view and if someone gets access to the account in case he/she can only transfer liquid tokens. Because this 13-week conversion process is defined by the chain so no hacker can change it. This is is the reason why I keep most of the hive as hive power because I know this is the safest way to keep the tokens and also earn the curation reward.

Thank you

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta