Today, this website was hacked and a scammer posted a short post with a typical giveaway scam. I still haven’t figured how the scammer got access to the website, so be careful and critical of anything that get posted here. Luckily nobody fell for the scam, as evidenced by the absence of transactions on the provided address. Yet this means that Hexicans are becoming more and more targeted by scammers.

In particular, phishing scams have been targeting Hexicans ever since HEX become the best performing cryptocurrency of 2020. While mad gainz are nice, it comes with consequences. Now all the scammers know who to target. I read truly sad cases of scammed individuals now almost daily. People regularly lose hundreds of thousands of USD value. As HEX price is going up, so is the number of victims. Most are victims of phishing attacks and there is also a smaller number of fake wallet scams.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

First rule to prevent phishing scams is to block&report ANYONE that direct messages you on social media without first asking for permission publicly. Phishing scammers will impersonate a respectable community member, or “official support”, or a hot woman profile, and will try to get you to give them your seed phrase, generally by directing you to a website that asks you to enter the phrase.

There’s no official support in a decentralized cryptocurrency, as there cannot be one. If one claims to be such, it is a scam. No admin will direct message you on Telegram or other social media, but imposters will. The only viable support is from the community members and only under the public supervision of a public chat. Always keep this in mind. Before you even ask for any help, you need to understand at the minimum the very basics of blockchain technology (<- read this!).

Only ever install software wallets from the official website. Do not google for the wallet installation! Search engine ads and a lot of hits are for fake wallets that steal your seed phrase. Similarly, do not buy hardware wallets from anywhere but the manufacturer directly.

Richard Heart made an excellent educational video stream recently that everyone should watch to improve their security:

Best regards and stay safe,

@Benzenoid