Protect yourself from phishing sites
Alice clicks, EtherAddressLookup to the rescue
I have already written about the dangers of phishing sites in previous posts like scammed by the slackbot and beware of fake ICO sites and I am sure that we are all trying to remain completely vigilant but, as I remarked in the latter article, fatigue can set in.
Taylor Monahan, co founder of myEtherWallet [.] com* has been ranting about the number of phishing links sending people to fake sites that steal people’s private keys so she was happy to announce a chrome plugin…
You can find EtherAddressLookup on the chrome web store and it is really simple to use and installs right into chrome
I will just give a couple of examples of how it helps:
I received this direct message from the slackbot on the QtumNexus slack channel :
The thing was, the link goes to myEtherWallet [.] cam not [.] com.
Heck! I didn’t know there was a dot cam TLD! And it sure as heck went to a phishing site that wanted you to upload your private key but I clicked it just to see. As soon as the page loaded I saw this
This certainly helps — and they seem pretty pro-active about updating the blacklist — but hey — somebody had to have reported it so stay safe. Don’t click those links.
Another thing that it does nicely is turns ethereum addresses into links to view the target address on your favourite block explorer…
From https://www.digitaldevelopersfund.com/ico/
If you have EtherAddressLookup enabled it becomes
There is a pop-up saying “see this address on the blockchain explorer”. Clicking on it takes you to your preferred block explorer so that you can check it is the right place
There had been a fake page (now taken down) developerfund (missing ‘s’) with an address that was not a crowdsale contract — just somebody’s scam account. This could have helped.
Try it with Alice’s address : 0x31EFd75bc0b5fbafc6015Bd50590f4fDab6a3F22
I did not put a link there. If you see one, it is courtesy of EAL. Alice still appreciates ether 😜
In conclusion
While YOU are responsible to keep safe, Harry’s EtherAddressLookup is another tool to help you when you are tired or careless. I wish he had been here when I clicked on the fake TenX ICO site 😢
Notes & links
*Taylor’s Rule : Always type in or bookmark links to wallets and ICO’s. Do not trust links that you find in messages (or blog posts).
Always confirm them.
Interview with Taylor by Omar of Crypt0news
Harry of EtherAddressLookup on twitter
