In the last year, it has become more and more normal to see crypto assets, such as cryptocurrencies (BTC) and NFTs, being increasingly adopted by society, and being accepted as a method of financing and payment. It is therefore important that if you are going to start getting into this world, do it carefully as scams are still the order of the day. In fact the Federal Trade Commission reported that the largest loss of all time had a value of $ 82 million. Here are some of the most common ways you can fall for scams : Fake websites Many times we may enter websites that may look secure, and give the appearance of being user-friendly or very similar to original websites, but in most cases, the fake domains will be fake. The domain names look very similar to those of the original websites. It is important to take a moment to analyze the website, one way to find out if it is a fake domain is to look at the characters in the domain as they use letters similar to numbers in real domains and vice versa. Fake e-mail Being one of the methods of communication it is very common to find emails very similar to those you would receive from an original brand, but there are details that we could look for. For this case we recommend you to take a good look at who is the person who wrote to you. For example: suppose you receive an email from Amazon, you will see that it is the same, but the email that is sent to you is a strange contact. Another extra measure is to never click on the links we receive until we are 100% sure that it is an original email because this way we can fall into cybersecurity attacks. Social network scams When we start to get into the crypto world through social networks, following verified influencers, or news accounts on this medium, it is common that we start to receive countless messages from people promoting a cryptocurrency or NFT. It is important to taste and know that no project founder or its moderators will contact you by DM to offer you a WL post, or an airdrop just like that, preferably close your DMs to reduce your probability of falling into a scam. Gift scams Often, you will find some giveaways on most social media platforms of celebrities or well-followed social media accounts. Scammers have noticed this trend and have started to establish it. Scammers will use these giveaways as bait and ultimately for their trap. As soon as you respond to these giveaways, they will need you to send some cryptocurrencies to verify your address. And they promise to give you even more after verification. But after you send your cryptocurrency, you slowly start to realize that you have been a victim of a giveaway scam. Investment scams Many times scammers create unbelievable projects, which promise many good things and practically nothing bad thus selling a “lucrative opportunity”. These are the two main types of investment scams you should be aware of: One ICO: They start by raising money through an ICO, but once they get the necessary funds they get out and take all the investment. Carpet mining scam: In this scam, a new coin is created and put into an exchange. After people have exchanged their cryptocurrency for the new one the developers terminate the project. It is important that this kind of scam happen with projects that are just starting, our recommendation is always to invest money that you can afford to lose and also always investigate who are the creators of the project, if they have a marketing company behind it, what companies are behind it, verified celebrities that share it. That way you can be less sure that it is going to be a scam. Use strong passwords and two-step verification One recommendation is always that you should never use one password for all your accounts, especially if they are passwords that can give people access to your money. Nowadays there are many password managers that can help you avoid forgetting a password. Another important step here is that if your account has a two-step verification option, always have it so that if someone manages to access your first barrier of defense, which is your password, you have a way to act quickly by a second verification method. Finally, the cryptocurrency industry continues to evolve with new and increasingly advanced security measures, so an extra recommendation to always take into account, is to keep abreast of new policies and security measures that have all the platforms we use and as mentioned above, in these places is our money, it is up to us to take this extra step of security to take care of it better.
