In 2018, the owners of cryptocurrency lost $ 1.36 billion as a result of the actions of criminals. Statistics includes asset theft, as well as a variety of fraudulent activities – in particular, related to ICO. Such data was sounded by Alisa Melnikova, head of the department of financial technologies of the Bank of Russia, speaking at the Moscow exchange forum, TASS reports. “Since early 2018 in the world, 22 large fraudulent schemes have been committed using digital financial assets, cryptocurrency. Abducted about $ 1.36 billion in the cryptocurrency, or $ 23 million a day. In January, only more than $ 420 million was withdrawn from the CoinCheck exchange, “Melnikova said. In addition, she disagreed with the head of the Moscow Stock Exchange, Alexander Afanasyev, who said that the regulatory “sandboxes” (in particular, the one created by the Central Bank) are like a “pool without water.” “I am absolutely against calling” sandboxes “without crypto-pool without a water tank. It’s more like a barrel of honey without a fly in the ointment, “Melnikova said. Source: CoinFox.
Each of us is asking ourselves whether it is worth investing in the cryptocurrency, when to buy, where, and whether it is worth keeping it in virtual wallets.
We see statistics every day, and we draw a general conclusion that cryptocurrency is a rather dubious way to raise your fortune, due to the wild falls of some large coins, constant attacks by hackers, people’s data theft and other dirty ways to steal crypto from the owner. Of course, the money that circulates in this sphere is attractive.
Recent Bittrex exchange case
A phishing attack on the Bittrex exchange. Everything was corny, the domain was changed to “ibittriex”, while the real domain is “bittrex”. After switching to a phishing site, hackers asked to confirm the IP-address and e-mail. Next, this window was displayed, which says that for security reasons, it will be possible to log in only in 24-48 hours. It means by the user who sees this window already had his wallets’ balances cleared.
So, with the example of even this phishing, you can’t be sure that each exchange is not vulnerable, and when such portals, in which big money is spinning, seem to become vulnerable, it certainly raises doubts in those people who would like to start investing in the crypto and cause dissatisfaction among those who have lost their means.
Avoiding phishing attack
Phishing attacks are quite a usual thing these days and the only good way to avoid them:
- always read the URL of the website, especially those websites where you enter some data.
- always check the spelling of the website name.
- check that “https” is present at the beginning of URL (even though “https” doesn’t guarantee much these days)
- if there are two different links appear in the search results, click the link that is not advertised (in Google, for example, ads are always marked like this Â
 before the URL)
 before the URL)Yes, it seems to be quite confusing at the start. But if you will start practicing such way of protection every day, phishing attacks will more likely, do no harm to you.
In conclusion, I would like to say that the boom for cryptocurrencies began relatively recently and not everything is still set for stable work, but more people are chasing fast money.
