How to stay safe from scammers in the cryptocurrency and DeFi community
DeFi is changing the world of finance, but you must remain vigilant when online
Dear YFDAI Community,
It is our mission to help clean up the DeFi space by excluding illegitimate projects from having access to our proprietary LaunchPad and SafeSwap products. We do that by vetting the projects that seek to use our LaunchPad or SafeSwap exchange to carry out their token generation events (TGE) and listings.
Whilst we do everything we can to block scam projects from listing with us, as members of our Telegram community you may encounter scammers impersonating admins and phishing attempts looking for your information to steal your funds. We want to help our community stay safe, this is why we have decided to write a guide informing you how to detect scammers and how to combat their efforts to steal your cryptocurrency.
To highlight some of the aforementioned risks, we will be showing specific examples from the YFDAI Telegram channel, but be aware that scammers target groups and communities throughout the DeFi and cryptocurrency space and are present on other platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Bitcointalk.
Reading this article will help you to understand the risks and how to avoid falling victim to any whilst enjoying the otherwise vibrant and innovative cryptocurrency communities that exist in the space.
When joining a Telegram group, always start by reading the pinned message. This may seem tedious at times, but usually you will see all the important and up-to-date information there. For a deeper dive, read these medium articles posted by YFDAI Finance as well as the official announcements channel.
Basic safety within Telegram channels
To avoid being victimized by scammers that can get into YFDAI telegram channels and on other social media platforms, please remember that:
- None of the YFDAI team members or admins will ever ask you for your wallet seed phrase, money, or cryptocurrencies. You should never transfer any information or funds to them. We will never ask for you to send your contributions to a wallet address that we provide on Telegram.
- All crypto transfers related to YFDAI are found in our official website which is: www.yfdai.finance
- If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. We do hold giveaways from time to time, but they will only be posted in the official chat and announced on our announcements page which can be found here: https://t.me/yfdai
- Scammers have been sending PM’s to users in YFDAI’s chat offering to help them while pretending to be admins.
- These scammers have been telling users to click links to spoof websites that end in different descriptions besides the official .finance website. At the time of writing this segment, our team just took out a newly created scam website- yfdai.site.
- In this specific scam, the user is asked to input their wallet seed phrase which enables the scammers to gain control of your wallet and all its contents and drain your funds. The link the scammers have used to get you to input your seed phrase looks like this:
Do not fall for this scam. Above all else, never reveal your private keys or seed phrase to anyone you do not know and trust implicitly, be it through telegram, private messaging, Twitter DM or email. We will never ask you for this information and anyone who does is trying to scam you!
- Never give out your phone number or personal details, even email addresses in the Telegram chat. If you get a PM from someone claiming to be an admin, you should immediately take a screenshot of the private message and forward it to an official admin in the chat so we can ban the scammer.
- Make sure the username of the official admin you are contacting has the title “admin” or some other title like “official advisor” next to their nickname (see list below) before engaging in any discussion.
Your Telegram Privacy Settings
Telegram gives users a number of privacy settings to control the information being accessed, such as your telephone number. Make sure you’ve reviewed the settings to hide information that doesn’t belong in public.
In the above screen shots, you can see my privacy settings, and nobody sees my phone number.
For further convenience, users can add all of the official admins to their contacts list if they really want to increase their protection from these scammers. This can also be followed by turning on the “archive and mute” setting for “new chats from unknown users”.
Other helpful security settings include the option to turn off the ability to be added to other groups by other Telegram users without your consent. These groups often entail pump & dump schemes and fraudulent activity, so it is best to turn this setting off too. You can do this by going to Settings, then Privacy & Security > Groups and Channels > select My Contacts. /This way only your friends can add you to groups.
Identifying Admins
Identify admins by checking their “admin” or “owner” titles beside their names on the Telegram channel member list.
Official admins also have a small star next to their name:
To see the member list, just click on “members” or “info”.
Team Member usernames
Checking team member usernames determines whether you are talking to the right person.
You may get messages from scammers pretending to be team members with their exact same photo/avatar and a very similar username.
Please report these accounts to an official admin and to TG so that we can ban them from the group.
Just click on the photo/avatar of the person you are talking to, to check their username and compare this with our list of admin usernames:
Official YFDAI team members:
@Sirjen7 @rockyyfdai
@chetz123 @Wessje
@Acg006 @CristianFIRE
@PrinceWadud @Phil_SS
@Marcin36 @Th_OREYFDAI
@Exhibente @Oliviayfdai
@ATHNICK0
@Jay_SS
@RichESQ
@nanachin333
@Blaznspawn
Recap
Do not transfer your funds to addresses received in private messages.
Block and report to YFDAI official admins any suspicious behavior and spam messages — this will help Telegram remove scammers, impersonators and bad actors.
By following the advice in this article, you will help protect yourself and the most vulnerable in the community who may just have started out investing in cryptocurrencies. Nobody deserves to be exposed to the devious con-man tactics deployed by unethical scammers, and YFDAI is proactively taking on the rogue actors in the crypto space and has your best interests at heart.
If you have any information leading to the arrest and conviction of any posers, scammers, phishers, or ruggers, please let us know.
YFDAI Team.
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