Crypto investors have just been warned. A Google executive warned crypto investors that they shouldn’t brag on social media about their crypto funds.
He said that crypto holders should pay enhanced attention to what data they’re sharing online and the reasons are pretty solid.
Bragging about crypto attracts cybercriminals
Mark Risher who is a Google executive in charge of monitoring email fraud and ID issues recently revealed that crypto investors have to seriously start thinking about how they operate with their email account.
He said that publicly boasting about owning tons of crypto on forums and any other public threads may attract cybercriminals.
He addressed these issues during an interview with CNBC.
These days, scammers are targeting victims based on relevant data that they gather from social media and they really don’t care how prominent and popular people might be.
Risher supervises Google’s initiatives to keep Gmail and more Google products away from cyber attacks. Here’s what he told CNBC:
“It could just be a case of mistaken identity or guilt by association. They could be using someone who seems to be low value to pivot toward somebody considered a higher value target, like somebody political in nature. Or maybe they saw that you were discussing Bitcoin on a public message board.”
Cybercriminals analyze social media
It seems that no matter how the cybercriminals choose the victim, they will first examine the social media profile or email account just to check for valuable information.
They could also break into the email account to change the victim’s password. If they succeed, they could get access to the victim’s crypto wallet easily.
Keeping your crypto safe
Considering all these facts, it’s strongly recommended that you enable a two-factor authentication feature wherever this is possible.
He also said that scammers have improved their MO and these days they can send personalized messages that could confuse victims: “You might think of this generic ‘Dear Sir or Madam, I am contacting you to ask you for a favor,’ but the truth is many of these attackers have done some serious research on their victims. So you might get what we call ‘social truth’ in your message.”
The best thing that we can do to avoid a disaster is not leaving our data all over the place.
