Crypto Basic 101: Phishing Sites and Avoiding It.

You might have seen already a lots of "money" opportunities anywhere in the internet that says it can give you a good, if not enormous, amount of money that can possibly make you excited.

But before you jump into that, you might ask yourself, "Is this true? Is it real?".

So before you take action of anything like that, remember that when something that is too good to be true can be 99% scam a lot of times. So watch out and be aware.

This article will serve as a guide to everyone new in cryptocurrency on how to spot and avoid a possible Phishing scams, but this article can also be applied not only in cryptocurrency - but I'll be only focusing on crypto as an example.

Phishing Sites.

Phishing sites in cryptocurrency are usually a site that copies or almost have the same interface with the trusted site that we know, where our information are into.

To simply put it, a Phishing sites are fake websites.

Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent ("spoofed") message designed to trick a human victim into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious software on the victim's infrastructure like ransomware.

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Here's an example/simple explanation:

You have a Binance account and you wanted to logged it in the Binance website through your web browser. Unfortunately, instead of clicking the official website of Binance, you clicked the fake website and there you have logged in your account. With that, the creator of that fake website has already know the information (emails, passwords, phone numbers, etc) that you have inputted and that would mean that they also have now the way to access to your account - and that could steal your funds that you have in your Binance account if you don't have a 2FA.

The only way you can avoid this to check the URL of site if it was really the official site. This could also be very hard to determine because some fake websites only has a 1 letter or number difference from the real website so you must think first and notice it before clicking.

And when it comes to our crypto wallet, never ever put or enter your seed phrase in a website. Remember that seed phrases should only be owned and known by you and inputting your seed phrase in a site is like giving away your crypto wallet and give scammers a full access to your assets.

But Why Is There A Successful Scams With This?

People who were in the crypto space for years or months are unlikely to fall for this kind of scams. They already know when to distinguish the real and fakes and they are more aware of how this scams works.

This phishing websites were created to target new ones or beginners in cryptocurrency as they are a suitable prey that can possibly be easily fall in their hands.

In my experience, scammers will tell you that there is this one site that give you free money without sending you money to them but the only thing they requires is to connect your wallet in the site by providing your seed phrase or private key to access it, and to make it more like a legit one, they will show hundreds of dollars of that sayin that it is there proof that the site is legit.

And with beginners in cryptocurrency, they are very vulnerable to fall for it and give it a shot. And after entering the seed phrase in the fake website, scammers now have the access to your wallet and it's up to them when they want to touch your assets.

So if you have remembered inputting your seed phrase in a site, this is the time to transfer your assets to a different wallet or if your wallet doesn't have any but you are planning to, it's better to forget that wallet just make a new one - for security purposes.

Final Say.

Phishing Sites has been a very effective strategy for a scams that even old people in cryptocurrencies can still be targeted and fall for it. Beginners are usually the victim of it.

If you are new with this things, it's much better to ask first to someone you can rely to before doing an act. A careless act can lead to losing your funds - and that would really hurt.

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