Keeping Your Private Key Private
So many fake offers ask people to turn over this vital piece of information. Don’t!
When you land on a cryptocurrency offer and it asks you to enter your mnemonic phrase or private key, stop.
You might as well stick your hand in a bear trap. At least, that’s the way you’ll feel afterwards, because when someone steals every digital asset you from your exposd wallet because a private key or passphrase was given to a scammer it feels just like being caught in the jaws of a steel trap. The anxiety? Overwhelming. And the feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, and depression that follows can crush you.
I see blatant examples of this kind of phishing every day:
It’s all fake. No one is giving out free money. I know it’s confusing because you’ve heard that people are airdropping cryptocurrency into digital wallets and you want to be sure you get in line to get that free asset, but it’s more complicated than that.
People unfamiliar with the ecosystem seem to think that cryptocurrency is just spun up out of thin air, and I think that this is a result of the hard forks that resulted in the ETH/ETC schism, the BTC/BCH split, and others. In some cases companies have also chosen to initiate airdrops for previous hodlers of certain tokens as a reward for their adoption.
In order to continue creating those currencies, miners needed to back them, which means that they weren’t made from thin air, they were made from a consensus mechanism, such as proof of work, or proof of stake, and if miners didn’t back a chain the value of that chain’s token will diminish. For examples of adoptions/valuation along these line look no further than ETH vs ETC.
The bottom line about these types of forks and promotions and the tokens generated as a result; you don’t have to do anything involving turning over a passphrase or a private key to get access to them. Never turn them over to wallet access provider or custodial service like a centralized cryptocurrency exchange. In the case of exchanges, they will usually will hold your passphrase and private key for you and private you a typical password/multi-factor authentication based access, so they have no reason to ask for it to provide giveaway tokens.
So many people get scammed every day. Don’t count yourself among the victims. You can take measures by downloading Cryptonite, a browser extension developed by MetaCert that fights phishing by blocking suspicious sites. Cryptonite also provides you a visual cue for validated resources when its black shield turns green. It even works for cryptocurrency related social media accounts to address the influx of scams now hitting Twitter.
At the end of the day, cryptocurrency puts the power in your hands. So, if you take only one thing away from reading today let if be this: never enter your private key or passphrase as the condition to receive a prize.
The MetaCert Protocol is a trust and reputation threat intelligence system for verifying web resources. It addresses a number of attack vectors, encompassing solutions for anti-phishing, child safety, brand protection, crypto-address verification, and news credibility. Find out more about the MetaCert Protocol, ask questions, and leave suggestions on both our White Paper and Technical Paper. You can also join our Telegram community to stay up to date on our blockchain project. Remember to install Cryptonite to protect yourself from phishing scams before it’s too late.
