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Protect yourself against these common DeFi scams
Protect yourself against these common DeFi scams

Types of scenarios to look out for & how to protect yourself.

Abishek Dharshan avatar
Written by Abishek Dharshan
Updated over a week ago

DeFi is inherently trustless, but that doesn’t mean you’re always safe from scammers. While we will never ask for your private keys, you may encounter a range of scam tactics designed to get you to share this information on social media channels like Twitter, Discord and Telegram.

We’ve compiled a list of scenarios from users who’ve been scammed on both crypto exchanges and DeFi interfaces in order to help you identify dubious situations:

The Admin Imitator

On support channels like Telegram, the scammer may pretend to be from Zerion’s support team and use similar usernames and/or the same image as that of Zerion admins. The scammer may ask users to send ETH to “fix the issue” or may ask users for their private keys with the excuse of a quicker resolution.

Protect yourself against such admin imitators by clicking on their name and verifying that their username characters are identical to that of the Zerion admin in the official Zerion chat. If they ask for money or private keys, they are scamming you.

Remember that Zerion admins will almost never send you a private message first and would never ask for your private keys.

The Discord Bot Scam

An adapted version of the Admin imitator, this is a new scam on Discord where a Bot representative of Zerion may announce updates, fixes and special features while redirecting you to a potentially compromised version of the platform thereby causing a phishing attack.

Protect yourself against such hackers by avoiding clicking unrecognized links and verifying the message for any inconsistencies or errors.

Fake airdrops or giveaways

Many crypto projects use airdrops to raise awareness and scale their community through the distribution of free tokens. However, users may be contacted by someone announcing fake airdrops and providing information that may endanger the security of their account.

Protect yourself by never sharing your private keys or other sensitive information to anyone. Zerion does not offer any airdrops and all our giveaways or marketing campaigns are announced clearly through our official social media channels.

As a rule of thumb, never transfer any money or share your private key with anyone.

🔖 Learn more:

  • It isn’t impossible for DeFi protocols to undergo system attacks. For more information, read this Consensus article on recent DeFi incidents related to security bugs.

  • Join our community in Discord if you'd like to chat with Zerion's DeFi community and be the first to receive product updates 💸

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