Crypto muggings have become common as the market continues to grow. Don’t get me wrong, cryptocurrency has many advantages, including offering diversification to investors from traditional financial assets. But unfortunately, this avenue has become very targeted by crypto thieves who aim to freeze your account and might also render you completely bankrupt. Have you invested your cash with crypto and wish to protect your funds against this activity? This article discusses 5 major ways to help you protect your funds and also how you can avoid such traps. It also helps you with basic knowledge of crypto muggings and how they occur.
What are Crypto Muggings?
Crypto mugging is a violent new criminal trend in the financial sector where attackers use your phone to access your crypto wallet. Most criminals use cold wallets (wallets that are not connected to the internet), which is why most funds are not traceable once they are stolen, meaning they can’t be refunded. The target is mostly new investors with little or no knowledge of a secure wallet.
Crypto muggings have become more common in London than in any other place. Famous federal departments have reported that many people are losing hundreds of pounds in Bitcoin. In such instances, victims have reported that some of these muggers tactfully entice them into giving them access to their cryptocurrency assets held on their smartphones, while others use force.
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How do Crypto Muggings Occur?
As part of cybercrimes, you might assume it takes place over the internet. But with crypto mugging, criminals steal mobile phones on the streets specifically to steal crypto assets like Bitcoin. In such cases, the criminals are only interested in getting the cash, not your phone. To transfer stolen assets, criminals must provide a wallet address, which could be used again in the future. They might also need to exchange it when they want it turned into a fiat currency.
Once the phone is in the hands of the thieves, they unknowingly use it to steal cryptocurrencies like ether (ETH) and ripple (XRP) from the victim’s account.
However, there are possible solutions to getting your cash back once it’s stolen. For instance, if you get robbed and are forced to make a bank transfer, the bank can trace the destination, which gives you access to reverse the transaction. This can only happen if the money is still in the criminal’s bank. In cases where the money is withdrawn immediately, unfortunately, you cannot reverse it. Despite the differences between crypto and bank transfers, there are enough digital avenues to solve these crimes.
One research quoted that if you invest in crypto, you should be equally prepared to lose all your money. When using crypto, if the criminal transfers your money to their crypto wallet, they get hold of your coins, and you can’t get them back.
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5 Best Ways to Protect Yourself from Crypto Muggings
Every day, scammers find new ways to entice victims into their traps, so you need to be on the lookout for basic information. Consider the following steps:
Store Your CryptoCurrency On Offline Hardware
This path will help you safeguard and reduce the chance of getting mugged. By storing your cryptocurrency assets in offline hardware, you protect them from being stolen. When you are not using the account, you can secure your hardware or paper wallet in a locked safe. Keep the keys far away from where the wallet is stored, in a trusted place like a bank safe deposit box or any other remote place that is safe.
Limit Your Crypto Transactions
You must limit cryptocurrencies held at exchanges to what is required only for trading and exchange. This can be made possible by applying secure and trusted bookmarks in your web browser to access your exchanges, wallets, and other online service providers related to cryptocurrency. It can also be achieved by applying numerous passphrases on your hardware wallet to cover your primary wallet balances and decrease losses as an outcome of the 5-dollar wrench attack.
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Try Using Other Online Sites
Your consistency in using only one site could become easy for the criminals to trap you. It would help if you used other online token generators like Google authenticator to help with multifactor authentication. This will keep you more alert to any fishy activity around your account. If you seem to notice any, report immediately and seek help. It would even be best if you went offline after reporting. As mentioned earlier, criminals won’t access your wallet once you have switched to offline mode. To keep it more secure, apply the more than one signature approach for funds held on wallets.
Do Not Share Your Crypto Currency Details in Public
By all possible means, avoid sharing or discussing your crypto holdings in a public forum and curb your public exposure regarding it. Regularly check your wallet address twice after pasting it. When providing a wallet address to someone provide an image of the address for verification purposes.
Do Not Trust Anyone Online With Your Crypto Sensitive Information
Be warned that most of these people who post about crypto are mostly the hackers themselves with very enticing baits, with promises that seem too good to be true. Do not trust them with your confidential information to avoid getting trapped in fraud. Do your about the company and review the reviews from those who have experienced their services to see if there is any record of scams or complaints against them.
Concluding Remarks
Crypto muggings have increased as years go by, with many criminals employing new techniques to trap people into fraud. Sadly, though, the victims of this act might end up bankrupt, which explains the need for the public or people interested in using cryptocurrency to get some basic knowledge. This article has listed 5 ways to protect you from crypto mugging. It’s not obvious that each individual might apply all the steps, but they are useful and practical to help you avoid getting trapped. While there are risks associated with investing in crypto, like the one discussed above, cryptocurrency might be your dream come true.
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