How to Stay Safe on Discord
The growing adoption of blockchain has led to the growing usage of Discord and Telegram for community building, and customer support.
According to the Google play store, Discord has over 100 million users and Telegram has a total of over 1 billion users.
Despite community managers doing their best to keep the group sane and void of scam activities, scammers have devised some means that aid them to steal valuable assets.
When using a crypto wallet you automatically become your own bank. With all the upsides (full control over your funds) and also the downsides (keeping your funds safe). Therefore you must be aware that scammers will try to trick you.
If you hand out your mnemonic / seed-phrase your funds will be gone in a matter of minutes and can no longer be restored.
This article is tailored towards avoiding scams specifically on Discord, however, tips on how to avoid being scammed and ways scammers operate are applicable on all platforms.
How scammers operate
Even though Discord has been working on new features to combat scams on the platforms. Scammers always find ways to bypass these by tricking people with various methods
Cloning admin name
Discord communities always ensure their Moderators have a distinguished name that sets them apart from members of the community. However, Scammers will try to replicate these..
For example, if a moderator’s name is “Jared#6596”, they’ll give themself the name “Jared#6567”. Same goes with the profile picture.
The scammers then start directly messaging people that recently posted a question or had an issue. They target people that are naive and new to the crypto space. Most often they will try to get your Seed phrase / Mnemonic claiming they need it to resolve your issue.
Promotional Links
Scammers like sending malicious links in order to steal your information. Ensure you verify random links sent to your DM before clicking on it. If it cannot be verified, avoid it at all costs.
Any information that requires an official link is mostly posted on the announcement channel, which is strictly operated by the admins of the community. Only admins can post on these channels.
Giveaway scam
Scammers always come to the DM of people on servers to trick them into winning a giveaway, especially if there is an ongoing giveaway in the group.
Tip: The best way to avoid this type of scam is to tag the admins in order to verify such claims.
Shilling scams
Scammers have inside knowledge of how projects work and also have a way to study when newbies join a community, they find a way to shill projects that have no investment return and use these tactics to lure potential victims to their community and scam them.
Trading Tutor scam
Scammers come to communities with large members and pose as experts in trading cryptocurrency.
They study newbies and enter their DM to offer tutorials on trading and share a fake screenshot of money won from trading cryptocurrency. They’ll charge a fee to teach unsuspecting victims trading and ghosts once a fee is paid.
Add Tip: Don’t fall for any screenshot of people trying to offer training. Most people actually making money are not pushy about you joining their training.
Ways to secure yourself from scammers
Prevention is better than cure. It’s better to secure your discord account from a scam, than looking for ways to recover your missing funds. The following tips are useful to help prevent yourself from scams.
Use 2FA Everywhere
This can be annoying, it’s sometimes stressful to open your app and need multiple verifications. (find a step by step guide here; https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/219576828-Setting-up-Two-Factor-Authentication)
Do you know what’s more stressful? having a sleepless night or landing on the hospital bed, because scammers have been able to get hold of your account, ensure this is done on all channels, because the scammers are prowling like a lion ready to attack.
It is really hard for scammers to access your 2FA code except they steal your phone or sit directly behind you.
Make use of the message scanning features
Discord has amazing features that help to prevent scammers from accessing directly, to prevent unsolicited DMs, The message scan features can be accessed in the privacy and safety section. So ensure you activate “the keep me safe” options.
Make Complaints to community managers
Always report every scam activity, to the community managers that is the reason it’s advisable to have a scam report channel on the discord community, this will enable admins to ban scammers and also save other members from being scammed.
Don’t accept DM from a random user
Always ensure you change your discord to “Not receive DMs from someone that is not on your contact list”. This is a good way to secure yourself from scammers.
Conclusion
The following tips will keep you safe on Discord or other social media communities for Cryptocurrency.
- Always check who you are talking to.
- Don’t open unverified links.
- Never give away your Mnemonic / Passphrase to anybody.
Having a cold wallet like AirGap will ensure that your funds are safe, and will provide an extra level of protection as long as you don’t compromise your seed phrase. Learn more about AirGap and how to set it up:
Download AirGap
AirGap Wallet
📱 iOS — App Store
📱 Android — Google Play (GitHub APK)
💻 macOS
💻 Windows
💻 Linux
AirGap Vault
📱 iOS — App Store
📱 Android — Google Play (GitHub APK)
Interested in AirGap? Stay in touch.
