This is Public Service Announcement (PSA) about articles written here on Publish0x and anywhere on the internet.

What started me on this article is Publish0x's new found friendship with Atomic Wallet. Let me clear things up first, I love Atomic Wallet. It is one of 2 of my main wallets that I use. I have no issue with them supporting and promoting Atomic Wallet but there are some "shady" tactics I feel like. As someone who works in IT I want to educate people about things they might not now. 

If people like this type of article I can make it a regular thing where I post a PSA about tips and tricks regarding technology/internet and not just crypto things.

TIP #1: Watch out for links

Atomic Wallet is great. I think most people will also agree with that statement. But what I do not like is people writing articles and using links to download or navigate to and it is actually a referral link. I think it's super shady and I don't use it if it is not clearly stated. What I want to let everyone know is there a few ways to check links to make sure they are referral links or to find out what they actually are. With all that being said if somebody posts a great article and posts their referral link and makes it known than I will gladly use that referral link. But do not try to hide the link.

This is my example: https://atomicwallet.io

You would think that the link above would take you straight to Atomic Wallets main website. But in fact it takes you to this address: https://atomicwallet.io/join?kid=18FFBK which is my referral link. It will both let you download Atomic Wallet but on my example link I hid the fact that it is my referral link. 

EDIT: I am going to leave the next section as is but I wanted to clarify it with an update from Igor (Publish0x). The link you see in the payment section on Publish0x will get you, the new user, 15 AWC in total for using it. It will NOT give Publish0x 5 AWC for each 'referral'. So what they state is 100% correct and not shady as I imply in this article. Publish0x/Igor I apologize for my assumptions. The following information still stands for other users posting referral links though as which is why I am leaving it as is.

Here is another example from Publish0x:

On almost every browser if you hover over a link or button, that redirects you to a webpage, it will show you the actual link you are going to go to in the bottom left. (see screenshot above). Now this is not always but usually when a URL is followed by a equal sign or a combination of equals sign, question mark or exclamation mark and then a string of letters and numbers that is a referral link. The reason being it have become commonplace (and easier for the website) to track referrals but just adding a string of specific numbers to end of a URL to track who that referral goes to. 

If you were to follow Publish0x's referral link it states your "promo code" being the 18BW4Z. 

Back to my example. If you take my referral link and just delete all the extra garbage (join?kid=18FFBK) then it would leave you with just atomicwallet.io which is the main domain for that web page.

The other easy way to see if the link is a referral link is to right click on it and select "Copy Link Address". This screenshot is in Brave browser but all browsers will have something similar to it.

Once you click on the "Copy Link Address" button the URL that link is pointing to is now in your clipboard. You can paste it in a new tab and see what it looks like. You could also paste it into a text document and see what it looks like in there as well. This method is not as quick and easy to see from a glance but it lets you then edit the referral link to not be a referral link before navigating to the site.

I know what some of you are thinking. But TrocProcLock, "Publish0x clearly states that it's their referral link and click it to get an extra 15 AWC." I would only partially agree with that statement. I wish Publish0x clearly stated that it was their referral link and that they also receive 5 AWC for everyone who uses their referral link. They get something on the backend which is not stated at all. I know, I know, it's not a big deal. But it is to me because to me it's not being a 100% honest with people. (please see my edit above where I state I was wrong and Publish0x does in fact not the 5 AWC).

Which is why I try my best when I post an article to give the reader the default link to the website and then I also give my referral link to it which is clearly stated as My Referral Link. I also explain to the reader what they get for using my link AND what I get for them using my link. I may be alone on this one but honestly is the best approach in my opinion.

Another item of note is to not trust Google results. Here I am searching for the Coastal-City game and there is a link that looks like it will take me to the game. When in fact it is actually someone's referral link

TIP #2: Don't trust the internet to always be there

I was in the middle of writing a article on a web game called Coastal City. It's not the most fun game on the planet. You have a little "city" where you can buy houses and put them on plots of land. As real time goes by you collect rent for each house. When you have enough silver collected you can buy more houses and there by increase the amount of silver and gold you earn.

Why I was writing an article about it is because you can "cash-out" the gold you earn as crypto. In order to withdraw your gold you have to buy about $5 USD worth of houses with crypto you sent to the game. So it's a $5 investment but you can earn way more than that in return. I was playing it for a while getting a feel for it and the day I decided to transfer the $5 worth of bitcoin into the game this is what I was greeted with.

After a couple of days giving it time to sort itself out it is still unavailable. Now did the makers of the game essentially close shop and take everyone's crypto without having to pay them back? I don't know. But what I do know is that a web game being completely down for days on end does not give me any confidence that it will be back and operational anytime soon. If it does magically come back I wouldn't trust it anyways.

So I wanted this to be a reminder that many crypto websites (any website really) can go offline at any second and everything you have on it could be lost. This is true for the entire internet. That is why hard core crypto enthusiasts keep their money in a hardware wallet. One that you physically have in your hand and one website being down doesn't stop you from accessing your money. If I was to send the $5 BTC to this game 1 day before I would have lost $5. So please do your homework and figure out what sites are reliable and what are not. And with any of these crypto games and faucets withdraw your money at the minimum amount every time to make sure you have your money.

This is what the game normally looks like if you care :)