We have collated some useful tips to help you ensure that your crypto wallets remain safe at all times.
Phone porting
This is a popular crime in the crypto universe. Your social media accounts are monitored by crooks to identify cryptocurrency related discussions where users part with their phone numbers and/or emails for easy connections. Once the phone number and email id are available in the hands of the crooks, through a variety of social engineering techniques they present themselves as victims and trick the customer support agent to transfer your phone number to another phone they can control. Your phone is now easily accessible to the crooks and they can access your crypto wallet reset password and remove funds from your bitcoin wallet or similar wallets.
But phone porting is not the singular crypto wallet security risk that you have. Ransomware, phishing attack and Ponzi schemes also present a significant risk to your crypto wallet. Given this scenario let us examine some of the best methods to safeguard your crypto assets from hackers. However, you should also know that there is no 100% fail-proof method to secure your crypto wallet and ensuring that your personal information is always handled with great care is the best way to keep your money safe in the digital world.
On that note, here are some useful tips for you.
1. Securing crypto wallet
Securing your crypto wallet is identical to protecting data on your laptop or desktop. You need to exercise more care while browsing through the web pages and clicking links or email attachments. When you are on an unknown website or reading through emails/links from unknown sources, the antenna should always go up, and you should remain vigilant. Downloading stuff from links via email can be among the greatest risks. When you are using a mobile (ideally this should be the only way you access your crypto wallet) you can benefit from Google Authenticator using a single IP in the whitelist which should also be your VPN for accessing the crypto exchanges.
2. Selection of crypto exchange
While selecting a crypto exchange, ensure that it is not only easy and flexible but also secure and reputed. Track crypto news sites and see if there are red signals emerging about any of the exchanges. Strange policies and frequent technical issues are other areas of concern. Similarly, if you have difficulty withdrawing your crypto funds you should move ahead cautiously and move your account to another reliable exchange.
3. Backups
Ensure that your crypto wallet is backed up at regular intervals. Such backups should also be stored away from your laptop/desktop so that in case of hardware/human failure you can easily recover the relevant data.
4. Encrypting
By encrypting your crypto wallet or the devices that you are using will allow you to use a password which will thwart any attempt by hackers.
5. Antivirus/anti-malware solutions
Encryption and passwords do protect you to a large extent. However, this may not provide adequate protection from key-loggers and similar malware. Therefore, you should always install dependable antivirus and anti-malware solutions on your devices. All though most of these solutions are free, it is desirable to use a paid service.
6. Distinct email account for every crypto exchange
While creating your account on any crypto exchange, always use a new email account and use it exclusively for that exchange. This way, pranksters can be kept off other valuable data through mail accounts.
7. Passwords
Are you taking adequate care while creating passwords? This is particularly important when you are dealing with banks, crypto wallets or for that reason anything valuable. Passwords should be a combination of numerical, alphabets and symbols as well as long. Potentially, you won’t be able to remember such passwords and therefore write it on paper and store the paper safely away. Storing the password on your mobile or other devices cannot offer the same level of security.
8. Two-factor authorization
Your crypto wallet should have a two-factor authorization for logging in and executing transactions. Once this is enabled, you enjoy a significantly elevated security level since fraudsters cannot decode everything simultaneously.
9. Social media
Be wary of social media when you discuss cryptocurrency. Never mention anything about the particular cryptocurrencies you are using or the wallets/exchanges.
10. Enhance phone security
Speak to your phone service provider and explore every level of security possible. Add secret questions, passcodes, pins, etc and also enable ‘do not port’ option for new SIM cards.
Conclusion
Digital security is never 100%. But, there are several measures you can take to play safe most of the time.