As the days go by, the crypto space becomes increasingly advanced and unpredictable, and so also the risks keep increasing. For this reason, one should employ measures to be safe in the world of cryptocurrency. It is true that there are boundless opportunities in the crypto space, but so also are risks (and threats), so one needs to be cautious of their actions. Here, we shall be taking the part 1 of the tips to get handy in order for you to stay safe while undertaking your crypto activities.
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A few months back, a friend of mine shared a saddening experience of how his wallet was wiped clean by hackers. While being curious, I asked how his wallet was compromised. He said he suspects that it is one of the airdrops he filled which required him to connect his wallet to a certain site that created the pathway for bad actors to gain unauthorized access to his wallet. Sadly, he used his main wallet to connect and the attacker made away with his entire crypto assets. What a really sad story.
People are always filling airdrops every now and then, obviously it is a very nice idea because many people have made a huge fortune from airdrops. However, one cannot be too careful with all these airdrops, especially the ones that will ask you to connect your wallet to a third-party DApp. In view of this, the best way to go about this is to create a separate wallet exclusively for airdrops. The wallet will not hold any substantial amount of your digital assets, at least nothing that you cannot afford to lose. So while you hustle for airdrops, you will not put more risks on your funds and expose your main wallets to bad actors.
In addition to creating separate wallet and other accounts for airdrop, try not to use the details you used for your main wallet on your airdrop account. This also cuts across other of your accounts - do not use the same password or login details for all your accounts, so as to limit the eventualities of attack being perpetrated on them. Furthermore, while filling airdrops, try to be cautious and avoid willingly falling into scams. For example; if an airdrop asks you to pay certain amount for their coins to be airdropped to you (which is not even transaction fee), then you should probably know that something fishy might be brewing. So be cautious.
The responsibility for this rests solely on you; do not release your wallet details to anyone at any condition and under any guise even if they claim to be staff or customer service representative of any crypto service provider. Note that no genuine crypto service provide will ask you for your sensitive wallet details (like password, mnemonics, keystroke, 2FA codes, etc). More so, you should note that these details are personal and should be treated as one.
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In the crypto space, you have to learn to limit the trust you put on people. There are cases where bad actors create phone lines, social media handles and even websites to impersonate the original crypto service, so as to deceive the unsuspecting victims and make them to divulge their sensitive information so as to use it to make away with their funds - this is a clear case of social engineering.
In the case of decentralized wallets that you create/log-in with mnemonics or phrases, do not save these details as screenshots on your phone. Someone can easily stumble into the screenshots on your phone and can transfer them to their phone and us them to gain unauthorized access to your wallet. The best option is to write down the mnemonics or phrases and save them offline. It is worthy to note that the safety of your crypto wallets is majorly determined by your actions in the crypto space and as such, you should take the full responsibility to keep them safe.
Thanks for reading
