How to avoid NFT scams
In a booming market, malicious scams are increasing at an alarming rate.
Many arrive excited, willing to invest and generate money, which opens the way for some bad guys to take advantage of the lack of information and preparation.
Less than a year ago, few people knew what NFTs were. Nowadays this has completely changed and is on "everyone's lips"; From friends, family, creators, media, etc. Thanks to this growth, it is also necessary to learn how to avoid NFT scams and this is what we will talk about in this article.
We are talking about a market that was small with total sales of less than $70 million in 2020 and increased in the third quarter to $10.7 billion; After these numbers, it is not surprising that many begin to pay attention. Many people are looking for a new source of income: artists, creators, musicians, collectors, investors, art lovers, etc.
The biggest problem with this type of market is that it invites scams that begin to undermine first-time entrants' trust and fundamentally destroy the ecosystem.
Why are NFT tricks so cunning?
It is so common that most people want to get in and dream of squeezing her to the fullest. The point is, buying an NFT is completely different from buying anything else online. We are talking about a long and arduous process with many steps. This opens up many opportunities for NFT fraud and we must learn to avoid it.
When we buy a product online, we generally buy it from a reputable store using a secure payment processor. These payment processors collect information from the merchant to provide us with additional security.
The other important thing is that the process is reversible, if we don't like the product, we can return it to the merchant and get a refund. In the event that it is not obtained by speaking directly with the merchant, we can choose to speak with the credit card issuer or bank.
The problem is that the NFT transaction is final, there is no way to reverse it, there is no support, no one to contact, etc. Basically, we're on our own and we can't complain, the only thing we can do is publicly report what happened.
This means that non-fungible code scams don't just use people's enthusiasm to try something new. They also take advantage of the system, so you need to be very careful and stay well informed.
How to avoid NFT scams
Given how NFT scams work, the only way to protect ourselves is to learn and educate ourselves about the space before investing. Getting as much information as possible about NFTs, the technology that makes them possible, and their cybersecurity is essential.
Control your inbox
It is necessary to prevent spam emails from reaching our inbox, only important messages should reach it. Fortunately, deleting all spam is quite simple; This way we will be in a more positive, skeptical, rational state of mind and are less likely to fall into the email trap.
Limit exposure
The more exposure we are, the more vulnerable we are to scams. This is something that happens a lot when we join multiple Discord communities from different NFT projects.
There are many scams that start on Discord, we should avoid joining different communities on both Discord and Telegram, especially if we are not going to be active. There are many bots that will make us send messages about launches, etc.
If we're going to stay in the Discord community where we'll stay active. It is necessary to deactivate the option that allows people to send us direct messages from the privacy options, in this way we avoid spam from bots. However, if we have already received these types of messages, it is best to report the Discord user.
Check out the project items
From the site, through social networks, the personal accounts of the founding team and their online presence. If we receive a message, either by mail, Discord or Telegram, we never have to click a link!
Instead, we'll go to Google and find the project's official website, and check the team's social media to see if there are any special promotions, launches, or sales before proceeding.
Validate the blockchain address
The very important thing is that before sending the payment, we validate the address of the blockchain where we are about to send the money.
For new projects, it is necessary to send the payment to the corresponding smart contract address. We can verify this address using a blockchain explorer (each network has its own explorer)
What is a blockchain explorer? It is a program that extracts data from the blockchain, organizes it and displays this data in a specific format. NFTs are basically pieces of code that live in a chain of blocks. Therefore, we can use this tool to be able to find all the information we need about a particular project.
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