Good morning world and TGIF! I hope everyone made it through the week in one piece! Before we start putting the beer in the fridge, let's review some things that are happening around us.
Scammers, scammers and more scammers!
If you've been into tradiṇg forex, indices or cryptocurrencies or just HODLing, you probably are aware that wherever you look, there is always someone who wants to take your money.
Recently i took part of a token crowdsale and was looking for up-to-date information in their Telegram group, as most people would. The group was riddled with scammers, DM-ing users to make traṇsfers to an updated ETH address. Last minute address switches, better deals, selling account, anything goes. As the cryptocurrency world is mainly anonymous, it's a good place for criminals earn their bread.
What are some of the recent trends? As a person with a good common sense, i haven't fallen victim to these clumsy scammers, why should i? When it comes to my money, i can make perfectly rational decisions and every new piece of information is treated with suspicion and dissected before my wallet opens. But some of these new scams make me shudder and i could imagine falling for these if unlucky and not careful.
Take a look at the following photo.
If you are like me, your monitor might not be the cleanest and free of dust all the time. Should someone, who you have grown to trust or have no reason to suspect, link you to this page with an announcement of an airdrop of free tokens or a neat referral bonus program, you might miss the two tiny dots below the letters "n" and end up on a phishing site instead. Trying to log in with your proper Binance credeṇtials would probably end up in quick depletion of your wallet balance on the correct Binance website.
Doṇ't believe me? I did it to you multiple times in this post, switching "n" for ṇ in a few places. Maybe some of you sharper guys or girls noticed, but i read fast and could have easily missed those.
Want to see something even more subtle? Sure:
Replacing the "r" in bittrex.com with an "ŗ" which has a small comma underneath it (it's called cedilla and is used in some countries - while added under specific letters, it is meant to change the pronounciation of these letters).
But the cedilla underneath the "ŗ" is so subtle, should you end up on a brand new phishing site, you could easily be tricked. Luckily, search engines and browsers act quickly and warn us when entering such sites, but there could be new ones popping up quite often.
How to combat this? Step 1: be vigilant. When something is off, take a minute to think it over, before you act. Step 2: look for tools to aid you. Cryptonite, a Chrome addon, available at the Chrome Store, warns you when it feels that you are visiting a site with suspicious content, however, when visitng a verified crypto website, it's icon in the toolbar will turn green. Strangely though, it warned me at the Twitter link above too, where the user is exposing these scams.
Note: I have installed the addon, but haven't tested it yet thoroughly. Grab the free extension here on the Chrome store.
Read the original article here on Business Insider
Let's end the week with a lighter & humorous note, yet in the spirit of this post.
Check out Chainbb, an alternative frontend for STEEM network. If you like forum style, that's the platform for you.
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