Do not step onto that Crypto Bomb in your MailBox

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A crypto bomb in your mail box?

Let me explain what this means with a real example
A guy named Joe (not his real name) checked his metamask wallet on his computer and found all his crypto gone.
His crypto balance stood at zero.

Joe was perplexed as he considered himself quite knowledgeable when it came to matters of crypto.
He thought himself to be quite tech savvy when it comes to matter of security of his crypto assets.

How the hack happened ?

Flashback to a few hours back. Joe received an email about his Steam gaming account which apparently had some funds.
The email stated that he had made a transaction with his account balance.
The transaction was for $50 and the transaction receipt was attached.

Joe was perplexed he had not carried out any transaction so he clicked on the receipt which appeared to be a text document to him.
For some reason the receipt would not load so he tried a couple of time but in vein.

Then Joe logged in to his Steam gaming account and much to his relief he found his funds intact and everything in place.

However sometime later when he logged into his metamask he found the balance was zero.
Over $1200 worth of funds were missing and had been transferred to another persons account without his authorization.

Is this something that can happen only to Joe and not you?

These kind of scams are getting more and more common so much so that if you were to throw a stone out of a window it may hit some one who has received such a scam mail.

Technically such scam mails are referred to Phishing by Wikipedia definition and I quote

Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent message designed to trick a human victim into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious software on the victim's infrastructure like ransomware

Phishing attempts via emails are nothing new a typical example is an email which claim your paypal account is suspended.

However this time around scammers are gunning for your crypto.
A typical email doing the rounds is from metamask support.
claiming in the subject line that the seed phrase has been imported to another account or wallet.

These scams are getting more and more targeted and some how are finding more was to dodge the spam filters of your email client and land into your email inbox.

click on such an email to open it is akin to stepping onto a bomb that can take away your crypto and leave you devastated.

How to respond to such an email?

When you install a metamask wallet as a browser extension either you create a new account or import an existing account however no where along the steps are you required to share your email.
Thus metamask support emailing you is out of the question.

So when you receive such en email which looks like the following image from my email inbox.

A thumb of the rule is never open such emails.

Another way to check the sender is to try to find the sender of the email before you open it.

If you are on a desktop or laptop you can simply hover your mouse over the name of the sender without actually clicking it.
Something like the image below

This displays the actual email/ domain of the sender.
I know these things require a bit of mindfulness however please be careful as there is only a click that separates your funds and your computer being safe from hackers vying for your crypto.

I am back on Hive after a long gap so not very sure if anyone still reads my post. If you find this post useful please do let me know.

Do you know how to protect your funds if your Metamask got compromised?

Yes it is still possible to save your funds if you clicked on a phishing link.
There is a small window of opportunity a small time frame that is available to you in which you can do a series of steps to nullify a phishing attack and protect your funds.
If you want to know about these steps please let me know in the comments.

My closing worlds

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@thetimetravelerz