In this evergrowing digital world, that we live in, there is almost no more of an unsettling feeling than having one of your personal accounts hacked, or having your personal identity stolen, and within the confines of Web3, and the world of Cryptocurrency/Defi this is the most luminous threat of them all. You may think it’s an obvious set of answers to avoid such a threat among all the news being reported regarding hacking, and for the most part, it’s true. Answers you’ve probably heard repeated over and over again, “Don’t click on links from people you don’t trust, or always make sure to enable 2-factor authentication (2FA).” If history has told us anything about crime, especially reported crime with hundreds of billions in revenues, it’s that the criminals don’t stop trying to hack people, it’s that they get smarter about it. Hackers are social manipulators who will use the most deceitful tactics to infiltrate you, a good example is one of the most alarming recent stories I’ve seen recently regarding a North Korean hacking where they targeted crypto experts, such as influencers, people working for smaller exchanges/projects, and lured them in with FAKE COINBASE JOB OFFERS. This really set the situation into perspective for me, the social engineering behind a truly deceitful and from a criminal point of view genius.
This one is very obvious but I have to mention it, in regards to that article, the first way of truly protecting yourself before you establish any business relationship online is by building a real relationship with that person, before you decide to pursue any sharing of personal information, or before you go off clicking any suspicious-looking links. Remember, you never know who is truly behind that other side of the screen when you are dealing with instant messages, so it’s best to try and schedule some sort of communication line with someone before you divulge into business, like a real phone number, or a zoom meeting/discord call, something to this effect, even then be weary and use your best judgment before you do anything you regret.
In my opinion, this is one of the most important aspects of this article, because not only are you susceptible to being hacked personally, but also the establishment in which you choose to do business so it’s very important to note that you must choose where you place your money wisely. A good example of this leads right back to the North Koreans again, where they chose a United States Crypto Start-up called Horizon, it was a semi-popular token swap, and out of thin air, 100 million dollars vanished from the retail investors abroad. I would recommend sticking with popular exchanges, commonly used amongst other investors such as Coinbase, Binance, Webull, Robinhood, Etc. Avoid startup exchanges at all costs especially in this day in age, that is a motto I follow avidly.
Another slightly unconventional way to protect your cryptocurrency assets is by placing them on a hardware wallet. This is a wallet that is completely disconnected from the internet and thus the capabilities of hackers. It has its own built-in firmware to protect and store your assets. If you lose the device, there are ways of still recovering your assets, with the system they have in place it gives you the ability to activate your Crypto from any one of their devices. You are prompted at the time you receive your device, to remember a phrase of words, similar to opening a crypto wallet like Metamask, or Trust wallet, once you have that phrase you are to write it down and store it somewhere where you will never lose it or forget it, and with this phrase, you are able to access your crypto assets no matter the device. There are multiple trusted brands out there today who make these hardware wallets, but the pioneer of the technology was Ledger, with their Ledger Nano series.
I just wanted to highlight to you guys some more words of wisdom to protect yourself, and your assets from the dangers of cybercriminals. Thank you for taking the time to read, and if you enjoyed this please support our subreddit for more news here. Our Subreddit
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