Security best-practices for crypto traders
Wherever there is money, there are criminals. This has been true for centuries and it’s no different for cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency traders. In order to protect yourself and your capital, there are a number of security best-practices for crypto traders you should follow. The word “should” is a very liberal term here, self-protection is simply not optional.
Perhaps you got hacked, scammed, or both. You are not alone. Most likely, what happened to you was entirely preventable. The best way to recover from any bad situation is to learn from your mistakes and improve your security.
Security is not a single thing you can do to be safe. It’s a continuous process and even a mindset. Don’t trust anyone. That includes online friends, offline friends, the Filthy Rich Futures team or anyone else, unless there is some form of assurance and accountability of the trusted person or entity.
It’s hard to set a limit to the potential impact of a security breach. Imagine identity theft, property theft, information leakage, vandalism to your social media, blackmail, the possibilities are endless. It’s not to try and scare you, this is very real and it happens every day.
This article discusses a number of basic things you can do to better protect yourself from the hordes of evil people on the internet.
What we do to protect the community
First of all, our options to keep the bad guys out are limited to what is allowed by the Discord Terms of Service (ToS) and ironically, Discord ToS sometimes favors the rights of the scammer to those of the user.
- We use both common and custom-built tools to keep the bad guys out
- Whatever makes it through our filters may or may not get detected later, we are vigilant and ban them on sight
- We have several people reporting any suspicious DM’s they receive and we act instantly
- Create a support ticket to report any suspicious activity. If we can ban a scammer, you earn a bounty!
We catch many bad actors but obviously, we can’t catch them all. There will always be the threat we missed.
Step you can take
There are many steps you can take and there’s no way this list can be complete. We listed some of the low-hanging fruit, the simplest, most obvious steps you can take to secure yourself as compared to where you did nothing.
Secure Discord
- It’s important to set up your Discord client correctly. How to do that is described in this article
- Always report suspicious behavior to the team by creating a ticket. We will respect your privacy
- Never trust anyone you meet in Discord (or anywhere online), especially with wallets (this includes the Filthy Rich Team)
- Don’t open links you’re being sent in DM’s or links from unknown sources, test them first
- Don’t talk to strangers who offer to ‘help’ or ‘advise’ you, especially trading or investing
- Stay in public channels rather than using DM’s. Public channels are monitored and the community helps protect you
- Do not disclose any personal information in a public channel.
- Do not discuss amounts in trading chat. Discuss percentages. Don’t make yourself a target
- The Filthy Rich Team will NEVER message you about money. If you receive a DM from us, verify our identity
- Never assume you’re safe and never assume our security measures will protect you
Secure use of Cryptocurrency Wallets and Exchanges
- The blockchain is public. Anyone that knows your wallet address can see your balance and transaction history. This is true for almost all cryptocurrencies
- Store your cryptocurrencies in a hardware wallet instead of a software wallet. We recommend using Ledger. Use more than one wallet for increased security and privacy. For example, use one wallet for cold (long-term) storage and another one or two for hot storage (day to day payments).
- Secure different wallets with different PIN codes and keep them in a safe place, offline.
- Do the same with your 2FA recovery codes, store these in a safe place, offline.
- Follow your hardware wallet’s manufacturers instructions: don’t store wallet recovery information on your computer but in a safe place
- Always check any exchange, wallet, investor, or service to see what others think. Is this legit or a scam?
- Secure all of your crypto-related accounts with 2FA. Make no exceptions
Using Software and Browsing the web securely
- Only use software from trusted manufacturers
- Get your software from trusted sources only (the official manufacturers site)
- Verify file hashes when you download software, so you know it’s not been tampered with. For example, use Hashtools to verify file hashes
- Use quality antivirus software and make sure it’s up-to-date
- Verify URLs and SSL certificates in your browser
System Security
- Only trade on systems you own and trust, do not share your systems with others
- When you lose trust in your system, for example when there’s strange behavior, stop using the system until you know it’s safe to use
- Keep your software updated
- The only way to absolutely (re-)establish trust in any system is by clean installation of all software from original sources
- Periodically re-install your computer, phone or tablet. Not just for better security but for better performance, too
- Use a reputable password manager like KeePass to generate and store your passwords security, and follow best practices
- Use strong passwords.
1qazaq1is a weak password. A password likesB9q23./cdm932{~is more difficult to crack - Use different passwords for each service or account
- Passwords should be changed periodically, you probably won’t do that. Something is better than nothing, so here’s a more practical rule for password management: The more often you use an account, the more often you should change that account’s password
- Make backup copies of your data and store them in a safe location (not on your computer)
Conclusion
We love our members and we take pride in our mission to ensure that everyone has a safe, happy and above all, profitable trading experience. Security best-practices for crypto traders stretch well beyond the things we listed here. Ir may seem like a lot of work to do this but in practice, it’s not so bad. It’s always better to be annoyed with an additional security step than it is to get hacked, or worse.
If you follow security best-practices for crypto traders and incorporate these and other basic security practices, you should be reasonably safe. Online, you’ll never be completely safe and bad things will happen eventually. Even when they do, good security practices will still protect you and can mean the difference between a jump scare and catastrophe.
Join Filthy Rich Futures here.