One major aspect of frauds or scams schemes is that it tends to follow the current social-economic situation. From Crypto scams, NFTs scams, COVID-19 scams to different forms of investment scams and Forex exchange scams, online scam is a revolving avenue.

Take a look at crypto scams for an instant, ranging from general hacks, ICOs scams, Identity scams to the more recent Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) scam, smart contract scam, cryptocurrency loan scams decentralised apps scams and many more. Fraudsters have been able to cart away millions of dollars using various methods to deceive both individuals and organizations.

How Cryptocurrencies are stolen:

• Exchange Wallet hack: When you make use of a Hot wallet (cryptocurrency wallets connected to the internet – for example, Binance, Trust Wallet e.t.c), the private keys will be saved forever on cloud storage which is always connected to the internet. Like everything connected to the internet, there is always a danger of your wallet getting compromised if hackers manage to hack your wallet and get your private key. If your private key is stolen, it is guaranteed that your coins will also be stolen from your wallet. It is advised to never use a once compromised private key again.  Hackers have been able to get into targets’ wallets using various malicious ways such as Phishing emails, cloned wallets, social media engineering and scams. 

The best way to avoid this kind of scam is to never give out your Private key to a third party for whatever reason and be conversant with different forms of scams to protect yourself from them. Another preventive method against theft is to have multiple private keys and diversify your digital asset portfolio, in this case, if any of your private keys is hacked you won’t risk total ruin. 

• Phishing Attacks: A phishing attack is when a scammer impersonates an authorised entity say Binance or Bitconnect to convince their victims to give out personal information about their Crypto account most of the time it’s the Private Key they are after. Phishing attacks take many forms it might be a back and forth email conversation with the scammer might be the target clicking on a link to a spoofed website, might be as little as SMS. 

Phishing attacks are common and the best way to protect yourself against one is to get familiar with the latest trend so you can educate yourself against it. And one thing you should know is that no legitimate crypto wallet provider will ever ask for your private key, your private key is your personal signature to your crypto funds. Customer care contacting you to ask for your private key is like google customer care messaging you to ask for the password to your email account, it is not possible. So even if you mistakenly reply to a phishing email without knowing, just know that it is a scam when the conversation is going toward you having to send your private key. 

• ICO fraud: An initial coin offering (ICO) is the cryptocurrency industry’s equivalent of an initial public offering (IPO). A company looking to raise money to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO as a way to raise funds. The significant difference between the two is that IPO is usually for a well-off company, whereas ICO is generally for the young and risky. Several ICOs have yielded a massive profit for investors while several others have turned out to be scams. Scammers have been able to exploit this option by posing to be a legitimate startup looking for funds to support their business vision and goal, and after people have invested in the startup, they abscond with the funds leaving their investors with nothing. The best way to avoid this type of scam is to do your own research and never trust a cryptocurrency deal that seems too good to be true.

How to recover your cryptocurrency

Yes, you can recover your stolen cryptocurrency, so congratulations if you have lost your digital asset and you are on the search for ways to recover it.

As developers and hackers learn and understand the technology behind blockchain, some have been able to come up with ways to trace and reverse transactions through the blockchain. You can find these experts on Cyb4rgeek, a platform that investigates frauds and helps victims recover lost funds. With over 8 years of experience and over 3000 successful recovery cases, Cyb4rgeek is beaming with hackers with enough expertise to trace and recover your cryptocurrencies.

Recovery Pro specialize in dealing with online scams and help provide reimbursement to the victims using disputes, tracking down digital fingerprints, cyber analysis and thorough investigative and recovery work.