“Nearly 7,000 people lost more than $80 million between October 2020 and March 2021 -- a 1,000% increase from a year ago”
This information comes from a recent article in Yahoo. Funny enough the article was in the yahoo!movies section. I don’t know if that was a mistake, or what, but I digress.
I actually thought this was an interesting article from a major news source and it was not what you normally see out of them. Obviously, the title was a little bit of clickbait, but, then I am guilty of that myself. What I liked is that this was not just some broad overview of crypto or worse, what we see out of a lot of financial sites, an advertisement for the government to crack down on crypto. In fact, this was mostly an informational piece on crypto security a protection.
Also, early in the article it points out that most of this loss was from fake currency exchanges and phony investment sites selling crypto. In fact, a large percentage came from the run up to Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live and scammers taking advantage of the excitement. Well, I am not losing sleep over that, as this one is an easy fix, DYOR and don’t be greedy. A few minutes reading on Publish0x will give you the knowledge to take care of these scams for you.
The rest of the article focuses on security. I am sure you brilliant readers are already on top of this, but, I will list their advice on the this, just so am doing my due diligence in writing.
Standardize authentication flows and practices across crypto exchanges. Better user authentication should be a standard practice for everyexchange, not a competitive differentiator. If all leading exchanges moved to industry best practices for account creation, login and recovery, it would help protect customers -- and their collective crypto assets.
Require users to enroll multiple authenticators to help with account recovery for each cryptocurrency exchange, whether that is two FIDO security keys or a FIDO security key and a biometric authenticator. Having multiple account recovery keys for each cryptocurrency exchange will help lessen support burdens and help users who lose a device. It will also offer users a choice of stronger authentication options.
Eliminating less secure backup and recovery options, such as using SMS or other knowledge-based authentication factors, will also help improve overall security, particularly for account recovery.
So, I am not just going to rehash the whole piece, please feel free to follow the link and check it yourself. This is truly one of the first articles, though, that I found that really hits home the point that crypto can be a self-governing enterprise, even if that was not their point. The security can be and is there to be safe and sustainable. A community that is looking out for themselves is going to operate so much more smoothly than one policed by outside government agencies.
Finally, those numbers at the beginning of the post are real. They should be taken seriously. When talking to people about crypto, make sure you are explaining the need for safety and solid decisions. (Try and not make it part of the same conversation about how they should but their money in something called #cummies or that dog coin as this may hurt your point.) I am also linking a Tenable blog that talks about the scamming that took place before the Elon Musk SNL episode. It is almost scary how these scammers work.
Thanks for reading.
https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/10m-daily-thefts-tells-us-172655714.html