By Peter

If your wallet's private key or seed phrase is lost or stolen, you will permanently lose access to your assets.

‍In this guide, we'll discuss how you can secure your wallet and avoid scams.

Tips to secure wallet

Here’s how you can secure your wallet:

1. Store your private key and seed phrase in a secure location. Mine is written on physical paper that I keep with other important documents offline. If you must store these artifacts online, use a password manager like NordPass.
2. Never share your private key or seed phrase with anyone. It doesn’t matter who asks - just don’t share it.
3. Secure your wallet password. If your wallet has a separate password, anyone who has it can get your private key. Choose a secure password and turn on 2FA.
4. Move long-term assets out of your daily hot wallet. Put them into a cold wallet or another hot wallet. If you have a lot of assets in your wallet and share its address publicly, you’re asking to get scammed.
5. Check the website URL, email, or social handle before taking any action. Scammers will pretend to be a trusted platform to phish for your seed phrase.
6. Turn off Discord DMs and don’t interact with unknown assets in your wallet. These are two common attack vectors that scammers use.

Common wallet scams

Scammers will go to great lengths to trick you into sharing your private key or seed phrase. Here’s a list of scams and tips to avoid them:

Fake customer support: e.g., “Your Metamask account has been hacked.”

1. Always verify the website URL, email address, or social handle first.
2. Remember: No reputable platform will ask for your private key or seed phrase.

Fake NFT or token drops: e.g., “We’re giving you a free NFT for your loyalty to the community.” or “You have $182K in akSwap.io in your wallet.”

1. Turn off Discord DMs when you join new crypto servers.
2. Don’t interact with an unknown cryptocurrency or NFT in your wallet.

Fake cold wallets: e.g., “Replace your Ledger to secure your funds.”

1. Yes, this actually happens. Throw that stuff in the trash.

Now that you know how to set up and secure your wallet, let's cover how you can get an ENS domain to make it easier for people to send tokens to your public address.

Up next: How to get an ENS domain?

Learn more

• Crypto Wallet 101 (Chris Cantino)
• How to avoid crypto scams (Rainbow)

‍