How to protect your coins 101 - avoid getting hacked

Hello crypto family,

Ian Balina was hacked and lost almost 2,000,000 USD. I posted a video on DTube earlier but it hasn't reached as many people as I'd wish for, thus this post, in more details.

Here you can check the Ian's compromised wallets yourself:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xeca2592e788c76f2e3cd4eb6ffcdbe5cf8141c72#tokentxns

and

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2cd7e2e65bb6ef5f233f9dea83736cf8195fe70d#tokentxns

As Ian said earlier, apparently his old university email was used to access his Evernote account, where he kept his private keys (encrypted). As dreadful as this experience must be, I would have expected more from a former IBM employee.

What should you do to minimise the risk of being hacked?

1. Using a cold storage wallet

If you don't own your private keys, you don't own your coins. By leaving your coins on an exchange, you're also leaving your faith up to them. You could get absolutely wiped out if an exchange gets hacked. For this, best is to use either a Ledger wallet or Trezor wallet.

You can have send all your coins (BTC, ETH, ERC-20 tokens and non-ERC20 if implemented) to Ledger and have your fund secure at all times. The only thing you need to make sure is to write down your set of words on a piece of paper, put them on a USB stick, and hide somewhere. You can always access your funds if you own those words, even if you lose your wallet.

2. Feeling to greedy to buy a cold storage wallet? No problem.

You can always use software wallets, like Bread wallet and make sure you do exactly the same with your set of words, as with the cold storage option. Again, you don't have to be scared of losing your funds. You won't get scammed if you don't share your private keys/words with anybody. And, same as with cold storage wallets, if you lose your phone or delete your app, you can just import the words again, and whoala, here's your wallet again.

Never, and I mean never, store your set of words/private keys on the cloud. You can easily get hacked and lose all the money you've worked so hard to earn. Remember this, never save anything on the cloud or your laptop/phone. N.E.V.E.R.

3. Passwords and 2FA

Wherever possible, make sure to turn on 2 factor authentication.

Passwords should be strong, including numbers, special characters and upper and lower case letters. Avoid using your name or you pet's name as your password, or you can run in trouble with hackers.

4. Leaving funds in exchanges

There's no reason for you to keep an excessive amount of money in exchanges, unless you're day trading. Remember what happened with Mt.Gox? As stated in point 1 - If you don't own your private keys, you don't own your coins.Period.

In my opinion, people are either leaving funds on exchanges because they are lazy, or greedy to pay the 0.00001 fees. Both make no sense. Id' rather pay a 0.01 ETH withdrawal fee and make sure my funds are secure, then to risk of losing them all.

Please, don't be either of those guys.

5. Online privacy - VPN and antivirus software

You should always be connected to a VPN when browsing the net, especially on wifi networks you don't know. Avast is a great company offering both a VPN and antivirus product. Check it out here. The benefits of having a malware-free pc and a VPN at hand are HUGE.

6. Don't be a show off

Success tastes great. Especially, when you made a lot of money in a short period of time, which is possible in crypto. However, instead of being a show off and displaying your portfolio all over the Internet, I'd advise you to stay in the shade. Hell, you can always donate a sum to a charity if you want to feel better of yourself.

Transparency aside, displaying your portfolio all over the Internet is just stupid.

Conclusion

You should be set off to a great start if you follow what I wrote here. I feel, it's almost impossible to get hacked if you follow all the steps.

Lastly, make sure to use common sense when opening your wallet in public places, using public wifi, showing your balance to friends and family.

PLEASE, upvote and resteem this/share with everybody you know. We need to make sure the crypto experience is great, especially for new comers. We don't want them to get scammed and run away, talking trash about crypto. We all want this to succeed, therefore, let's all put a ton of effort into explaining the importance of SECURITY.

//Sarmaku