Protecting yourself from hacking /scams & wallet security – Ryan CMO

Just like in the fiat world, cryptocurrency is also subject to scammers / hackers. There will always be people who try to get their hands on your money. I will be going over some types of scams; how to prevent them, what to look for, protecting yourself and your investments is very important. Below is a list of scams that can happen in crypto and how to prevent them. I will also talk about protecting your wallets as well.

Dust Tokens / NFTS: Dusting tokens and NFTs are used to drain your wallet of all your investments, these are malicious random airdrops sent to your wallet. It is very important that you do not touch the tokens or NFTs as they can be activated to give someone access to your wallet. If you feel uncomfortable having them in your wallet, you can always create a new wallet and send your investments there. No matter what you do, DO NOT touch the dusting tokens or NFTs.

Email Scams: Emails can be sent out pretending to be a support for an exchange or wallet asking for your seed phrase or account information, No one that is legit will ever ask you for personal information or your seed phrase. It is very important never to give anyone your seed phrase at anytime as they will then be able to access your wallet and do whatever they want with it.

Telegram / Discord Scams: Beware of fake groups and imposter accounts that will try to pretend they are something they are not. Real trustworthy developers will not pm you first or ever ask for money. Make sure to always follow official links for the project and make sure that all usernames are legit when talking to someone.

Twitter / Facebook scams: On social media beware that there are fake accounts that will pretend to be a support of a project, exchange, or a wallet. These are scams that try to get your seed phrase or connect your wallet to a malicious link. Never click on any links that you are not aware of if you are on a device that has your wallet, you don’t want scammers to be able to access your wallet. Again, it is always important to follow official links and social media, legit projects / companies will never contact you and ask you to enter your seed phrase or click on an unknown link.

Rug pulls / honeypots: These tokens are designed to steal your money, whether the contract sent tokens to multiple wallets, no liquidity lock, or not being able to sell. These are all red flags, and are designed to give the developers money by dumping on the holders. At Mandox we locked 75% of developer wallets, locked liquidity for 3 years, and have multi-sig wallets for missions and marketing. This ensures that our investors are safe and that we cannot dump on our holders.

Influencer scams: There are many influencers in the crypto industry that only care about money. They get paid to promote a project and advertise to people on social media. Some are legit and others not so much. Some influencers will buy in before they get their followers to join and from that they will cash out, there for dumping on there holders and walk away with cash while their followers struggle. A lot of scam influencers will promote anything for money, even rug pulls and honeypots. It is important to do your research on these people, a lot of them will also have fake followers on social media platforms. As far as protecting your wallet goes, I cannot stress enough how important it is to protect your seed phrase. In my opinion it is very important to only keep hard copies of it and store it somewhere safe. You never know who has access to your electronic devices. The safest way to store your crypto or NFT investments will always be in a ledger. It is very important that you only buy the ledger from the official websites and not a third-party website, you don’t want to buy a device with malware on it.

Hackers and scammers are always coming up with new ways to get access to your funds. As an investor you need to stay vigilant and prepared for these things. As a reminder this is not financial advice but just some information to help you notice and prevent scams.