Scammers and hackers are constantly searching for ways to separate you from your crypto. Almost every single day we hear of someone that lost a significant sum of crypto or even their life savings to an unscrupulous hacker or scammer. Don't be a victim and make sure you are protected from these thieves.

Seed phrase

When you create a wallet or decide to go the safest route of cold storage, you are given a seed phrase which is usually 12 or more random words which you use to restore your wallet should you lose access to it. Don’t keep these words stored on your phone as a hacker can gain access to it or worse, someone close to you such as a bad friend could steal your phone and access this seed phrase. Store your seed phrase written down in a safe or place where only you or a trusted third party have access to. 

Passwords

Use unique, strong passwords on every account and wallet. Should a hacker get access to a password that you commonly use, they can quickly drain all your wallets very quickly. Do not store your passwords in the cloud, this also makes them vulnerable to a determined hacker.

Use 2FA on everything

2FA is a very strong deterrent against hackers, I suggest using the Google Authenticator over phone based 2FA. Phone based 2FA is susceptible to a Sim Swap attack. I also suggest using a separate device such as an IPad to store your 2FA codes in the event your phone is stolen, broken or simply lost.

Sim swaps

A Sim swap attack occurs when a malicious person convinces a representative from your phone carrier that they are you and that they need to Sim swap your phone, in effect your current phone becomes useless and they gain full control of your phone. This is a really aggressive  attack because now that person has full control over your phone. The best way to safeguard against this is call your phone carrier and insist that your phone can only be Sim swapped if you and the phone are both present at one of your phone carriers branches.

Allowable addresses 

This is a great last line of defense should you fall prey to a phishing or hacking attack. Many exchanges have a safety feature called allowable addresses. You insert the addresses for trusted destinations for your crypto and and any new addresses have an automatic time delay of 72 hours or more. Should a hacker take over your wallet or hack your exchange account, this safety feature gives you that amount of time to shut the account down and stop them stealing your crypto.

Phishing

This is the most common form of attack and involves a malicious person contacting you through various social media, text and emails. They try luring you with exceptional rates on investments, impersonate very attractive females that are suddenly interested in you or pretend to be a representative of an exchange you have crypto on. The bottom line here is don’t click suspicious links, exchange support will not directly contact you and unfortunately that smoking hot girl that’s texting you is fake. Just use common sense here, if it seems too good to be real then it’s definitely not real.

Conclusion

It always saddens me when I hear about someone that lost all their hard earned crypto to a hacker or phishing attack. I hope these simple steps will help a few people out there not fall prey to these thieves.

Stay safe everyone.