Scam Prevention
Work in Progress
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Seed Phrase or your Secret Recovery Phrase is the 12 word sequence that is needed to access your wallet.
For Comparison, your Seed Phrase serves as both your Email and Password when compared to the typical account creation in Web 2. Since, Blockchain is Anonymous, and emails and KYC are not needed, your seed phrase is the only thing that links you from your crypto wallet.
Giving anyone your seed phrase means giving them access to everything in your wallet. For this reason, you should never share your seed phrase with anyone. No legitimate person or websites will ask for your seed phrase.
A burner wallet is basically a "Throw-away wallet", whose sole purpose is to manage the risk of a user's main wallet from getting scammed by serving as a connection between the main wallet and a separate entity (e.g a website / a smart contract).
A burner wallet can simply be created by creating a new account in your metamask extension. By doing this, metamask gives you another wallet address that you can use, instead of your main wallet, to connect to malicious websites or interact with smart contracts which you do not have 100% confidence on. By doing this, you prevent these contracts to send transactions (which you might accidentally approve and is dangerous if the contracts involves taking away all your assets) directly on your main wallet where all your assets are stored.
For Example
You are told to mint a basically free "Broke Ape Yatch Club" NFT for 0.001 eth because your friend told you so. But you are too busy to DYOR since you are playing Guild of Guardians with your guildmates. But BAYC derivates have always gone to the moon in the past so you become afraid to NGMI and FOMOed to mint, even though the project is obviously a scam. "But what if it is not a scam?" You ask yourself, and you proceed to mint.
You create a burner wallet, send that wallet with 0.001 eth + extra for gas, and use that wallet to mint in the website.
Few minutes later, your friend tells you that BAYC is a SCAM and you basically gave the devs an approval to get all the assets on your wallet. Thank God, you used a burner wallet without anything on it and you saved your Kevin NFT in your main wallet!
Reading goes a long way. In this case, reading becomes a very important part.
When Interacting with any kind of wallet transactions, always read what you are signing. These transactions will have a short explanation of what actions you are allowing a website to do with you wallet, always read this.
One main purpose of Blockchain Technology is to get rid of the biggest middleman in cash transactions - the bank. This is because the bank have the authority over your assets once they have it. They can freeze your account if they want, and if they go bankrupt you can lose your money.
Getting your assets stolen is worse than getting them stuck. As much as possible, do not use a middleman unless a middleman is vouched by a trusted official. If you can, just buy NFTs in the marketplace, where it is secure.
If you are not aware, you may also use Opensea's Private Sale Function. It is similar to whitelist process where you might be more familiar. The seller will only make the sale available to you.
If you are using a middleman to save marketplace fees, try to weight the pros and cons. Is the marketfees high enough for it to be worth the risk to use a middleman? Heck, isn't it a higher risk if you use a middleman for something that worths that much?
Also If you observe any kind of red flags when transacting, withdraw from the trade immediately.
Paying fees in Gas is a lot of money saved compared to paying the price for a mistake that you knew you shouldn't have made.
Own Research.
Who are the developers? Are they doxxed? Do they know what they are doing? Are they smart? How popular is this project? How many people follows their socials? How much of them are active? Who are the other people who believes in this project? Who are the Partners? How did their partner? What is in it for the Partners? What have they built so far? What are their plans? Is it realistic? Is it attainable? Where is the paper? What do you like in this Project? What is their vision? What is their mission? Is this a scam? Is this a cash grab?
What do I think of this project?
There are hundreds, if not, thousands of projects getting started in crypto. But only a handful that may succeed. You can diversify, but at least, pick those that you think are one of the best.
You may regret missing out, but you will never regret avoiding a loss.
Ask others for insights but create your own decisions. If you win, it may be because you've done your research, if you lose, it may be because you did not research enough.
Discord is the most used platform for NFT Projects. As a result, a lot of scammers have became active on the platform, trying to exploit / hack / scam people.
Here are some ways on how you can protect yourself in Discord
Go to user settings -> Privacy & Safety -> Click "Keep me safe" -> Tick off / Deactivate "Allow direct messages from server members"
A prompt may pop-up that says "Do you want to also apply this change to all your existing servers? You can disable direct messages on individual servers by visiting that servers settings page.
The decision is up to you, but I recommend clicking "Yes" which will automatically disable people on the same server as you from sending you a direct message
You can enable / disable this on discord servers, indivudally by right clicking the server in your server list at the left of discord and clicking "Privacy Settings".
Some Discord Servers may require you to Turn Off this feature as a part of their verification process. (e.g. their bot needs to dm you a link for verification)
Additionally, You can also disable people from adding you as a friend in the same section in user settings.
Nalin - 930664789531852000
Derek - 160364330007789000
Killzz - 897875265076748000
Nick - 785639167132434000
Luca - 932450756328587000
Caitlin - 633892361667215000
Ryan - 780339742519984000
Aaron - 336643455331860000
Jovis - 207676439305256000
Irinius - 674048989036806000
Howie - 195129769728278000
Guardians Mod - 872385958018940000
Boslee#2243 - 280061542467108000
wusong101#7530 - 442516130406465000
kenjiro#4786 - 530709769338748000
StepFam 👑 SemperOki#7240 - 370775532582993920
Gray#9404 - 93900628962578400
aphorae#0001 - 265127312687759361
Drew#0181 - 87608423641776100
Stormex#9485 - 540886325356658000
Toñin#1556 - 816643941410668000
Legion#8386 - 691811853101301000
MikeMic#5385 - 868460400725860000
jcpunks.nom#6231 - 901439769538605000
kelpie#6645 - 375015703834787000
mrs.urikya#2220 - 625967129212223000
Bedu#1534 - 846404259066019000
D33ZΞY#5510 - 881731814044086000
Skyler#6512 - 354964560740089000
DonVirgote#6463 - 541795327754371000
firebolt#6887 - 311162745519210000
a Discord ID is a unique Discord Identification Number. It is a number that is assigned to every discord account when they are created. This is Unique or Different to every discord account and is also unchangeable.
Discord ID is different from Discord Tags.
Discord Tags is a combination of Username and Discriminator.
For Example. My Discord Tag is coolspotato#9800 and my ID is 421287035559739403
Discord Tag (Username + Discriminator) are both changeable but my ID is not.
Because Discord IDs are Unique and Unchangeable, it can be used to Identify users and to effectively differentiate real users from Impersonators.
To get everyone's Discord IDs you need to first activate Discord's Developer Mode.
Go to User Settings -> Scroll Down and Go to "Advanced" -> Activate "Developer Mode"
After this, you can get a user's ID by right clicking their profile and clicking "Copy ID"
Last modified 10mo ago