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Beware of Cryptocurrency Scams… it seems like they’re everywhere at the moment. And the people behind them are insanely clever! They can tie you up in various cryptocurrency scams in a matter of moments. Unfortunately, the newness and largely unregulated landscape of cryptocurrency and the blockchain is a haven for scams and hackers right now, but there are steps you can take, and things to be aware of that will keep your identity and your assets safe. Let’s have a look at what happened to us and what we learned… 

The following is an edited version of the video transcript…

BEWARE CRYPTOCURRENCY SCAMS… AND WHY ‘SLACK’ IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN ‘DISCORD’

In this post, we’re going to talk about Discord and the ways that people are actually getting spammed, hacked, and taken advantage of in cryptocurrency, and how you can avoid that, or at least do the best you can to avoid that.

So, first of all, looking at what Discord is, it came about in about 2015, and was always just used as a platform, or if you remember the old forums, like chat rooms, mainly for gamers.

Gaming is very much about technology and most of the gaming world is now on the blockchain. So it’s been a natural progression to go into anything and everything cryptocurrency, like cryptocurrency NFTs.

A lot of people will go, “oh, I’m getting invited to Discord, what does that mean?” Basically, it’s an extremely poor man’s version of Slack.

So Slack is a platform, a forum, and community, a discussion chat, and an instant messaging service, that is way above anything that Discord could ever hope to be, simply because Slack is owned by one of the biggest companies in the world, Salesforce.

It’s used for workspaces. It is highly trusted within all industries and that’s exactly why we chose to create our own community on Slack for those doing Dan Hollings The Plan with us. We have our community in Slack, not in Discord.

There are lots of people that are setting up groups and communities around cryptocurrency because what ultimately happens is, yes, you can have a community on Facebook, but the problem with Facebook is that not everybody’s on there. 

Facebook is also really hard to navigate. It’s not really great on filing systems. I mean, they’ve got the guides, but it’s not perfect.

We personally find that Slack is just the best. We’ve got a lot of different channels, and you can direct message with people. And we’ve got our Zoom recordings and everything saved all in one space so people can actually come back and get all the support and information and updates they need.

CRYPTOCURRENCY CHANNELS ON DISCORD

A few people are choosing to go over to Discord now in the cryptocurrency space.

Discord is actually a very technical sort of forum in the sense that people who are in NFTs or launching different cryptocurrency projects will build their community through Discord so people can chat and catch up.

And if there’s going to be any cryptocurrency airdrops, which if that’s jargon to you, literally means when there’s free delivery of a certain amount of tokens or cryptocurrency coins as a project launches, they’ll deliver it through something like Discord.

But not everything in Discord is safe and secure because it’s a completely free platform. So the hackers and the scammers and the spammers out there have found their way in.

And unfortunately, we have actually fallen prey to this as well. And that’s why we wanted to do this post (and the video above) to warn you about it. 

I’ve been in Discord now for almost a year but I’ve actually taken a bit of a break from it. I had not taken part in Discord since November 2021, and coming back into it recently, it’s like I let my guard down and I didn’t double-check on a few things. And I stupidly responded to a direct message.

So direct messages from people inside of the communities is pretty much the first thing that you NEVER ever want to do. NEVER click on a link to a direct message from somebody you don’t know!

And pretty much you can block having anybody message you from any of these “servers” as they’re called. The server is basically the group, the community, the forum you come into.

So If you’ve been invited to a group, this one’s called “NFTs Tips”, you click on your privacy settings here and says “allow direct messages from server members”.

No, thank you! Block that off, and click done.

Now, if you’re wanting to remain super safe and secure, I would actually recommend:

1. Go down to your user ID down here

2. Go to the cog for settings

3. Come into the privacy and safety part

4. Select “Scan direct messages from everyone”. Or “My friends are nice, just scan direct messages from everyone unless they are my friend”.

I personally want to scan direct messages from everyone. The system will actually block what looks like fishing links and unsafe links. They just won’t deliver those messages to you.

But the thing is, you might have a friend on Discord and you don’t know if their account has been hacked and duplicated, and then somebody is messaging you. And you’re like, well, I know this person.

And even though a lot of people on Discord use their names, we use little code names instead of our own names.

You don’t know if somebody’s been hacked so you just don’t want to click any links.

So again, go to, “All servers allow direct messages from server members”.

This will be across any server community that you join, so click it off. 

I’ve done that since we stupidly fell prey to a direct message, I just didn’t follow through. It had everything that looked like it was somebody that I could trust. But of course, I couldn’t actually trust it.

And what had happened was I had missed seeing this particular channel that was reporting scams… Lo and behold, exactly what these people had been messaging is what I fell prey to.

I just thought I was getting a direct message from the creators of a project we were looking to buy NFTs from.

Then I go into Discord and they clearly state, that they say we will never direct message anyone. 

So please, just look at the new announcements of the groups you are in.

It was just a straight-up case of being taken advantage of. And again, I had my guard down because I hadn’t been in Discord for a while.

Hopefully, those two things you can go and do now. Come into Discord and either go to the servers that you’re in or just go to the user settings for all of your servers and block off anybody getting direct messages to you.

And hopefully, that will also block you from getting your account duplicated or hacked and used in inappropriate ways.

One thing to take note of is just be very, very wary of any Discords that you do join personally.

I went and set up a new account just so I could keep it clean and not be as exposed to as many people. And that was so I could come in and learn more about one of the projects.

But again, come into the privacy settings and make sure that you’re disabling direct messages from any other server members.

It’s just nice to be able to lurk in the background and just read everything and stay up to date on everything. That’s what I’m using this particular new account for. The previous account I’ve had for a while and I’m a member of many different groups, and I think I just felt like I lost control of it a little bit there.

That’s why I’m taking it a bit easier.

Anyway, I hope that helps. And I hope that keeps you safe. And please, whatever you do, just never, ever click on a link that is being sent to you in a direct message, whether it be on Facebook messenger or Discord, you need to know the person.

As always, this whole cryptocurrency game is about having trust with the people that you’re learning from or that you’re getting advised by.

I really hope these sorts of tips will help keep you safe so that you don’t lose money by doing something silly like I have done, but perhaps I just literally did this in order to be able to pass on the message.

Anyway, we’ll see you in another post soon. Bye for now.