Asalam Alikum! I hope all Steemains and members of the community are fine and enjoying their life with family, friends and loved ones. Today I am here to take part in the Week 4 contest by SteemitCryptoAcademy. The topic of the contest is "Common Crypto Scams And How To Avoid Them" and I will try to share my knowledge on it.

Before we understand what is "Crypto Scam", let's quickly know what is a scam. A scam is a deceptive scheme or a cheating method that result in stealing your money or important assets. It is also a verb meaning of cheating someone in unique way, like a bank will never call you for your credit card number and security code, but a scammer will call and act like he is a bank person who needs your data so your account and money both remain safe.

In digital world, scammers are moving towards crypto scam which means your cryptocurrencies can be stolen in different ways. As cryptocurrency is hard to recover once taken or stolen, scammers are becoming more active on crypto platforms. The cheater or scammer will try to get your passwords and private key to move funds from our wallet to his wallet and as blockchain is decentralized, you can't recover your funds.

The main thing that make us the victim of crypto scam is greed. Mostly hackers and scammers will show you money and share the scheme to double or triple the money just by sending it to address. They will make famous celebrities fake pages and share fake screenshots done either on Adobe Photoshop or through browser's Inspect Element.

There are three main reasons why cryptocurrency is attractive to the scammers and hackers i.e. decentralization, irreversible, and pseudonymous.

• Decentralization: As decentralization is nature of blockchain, we can't do anything but can move to centralized exchanges (CEXs).

• Irreversible: Second reason is irreversible which means once cryptocurrency is sent, there is no way to retrieve it. You can't do anything to reverse the transaction.

• Pseudonymous: As there is no name but the wallet addresses in cryptocurrency, so it is not possible or extremely hard to track the specific user and if they have hidden themselves, it becomes impossible to find them.

You might have seen some Steemit accounts are sharing malicious links in the comment section of popular publications. People on these posts usually click on the links and it lead them to scammer website or a page where they ask for private key or seed phrase to access your wallet. It may also be possible that a software automatically installs on your laptop or PC which can steal your passwords. So its recommended to not click on any non-trusted link on Steemit or on any platform.

There are multiple different crypto scams today and we need to be aware of all of them. I will try to explain one by one because with knowledge we all can be safe from hackers and scammers.

The first and easy scam is through fake websites, links and wallet apps. It requires less money to create a website but can result in big scams. Scammers usually create fake trading platforms and websites offering doubling and tripling of the money which is very attractive to most of us. They also create fake applications or wallets of famous wallets to trick victims. Such websites or apps are similar in terms of design but domain or app name is little bit different. You need to check the website properly before inputting your credentials.

Phishing scams are not new and Facebook users and website checkout pages were the real victim of it. Now due to popularity of cryptocurrency, scammers are focusing more on crypto than any other platform due to it's decentralization. The main focus of scammers is crypto wallet private keys which they get with phishing attempts. The above website type is the one phishing scam method. Second is sending emails to attract recipients to enter their credentials on a website that will double their money within 1 minute or more. Once scammer gets the private keys, he will change it immediately and you loss your funds.

In this crypto scam, the hype is created by the scammers and fraudsters either through emails or social media platforms specially Telegram, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. They do fake pump or tell people that you are getting this coin in lowest price and tomorrow at this time it will do 100x to 1000x. The coin or token either do 100x to 1000x but for one second in which investors can't sell it or they just run away with the money. Moreover, scammers also succeed in inflating the price and then their sell their holdings which result in sudden drop of price. This happens within few seconds and the user either stuck in the trade or they just sell it at -10x to -100x price.

Another type of crypto scam is fake endorsements from celebrities, businesspersons, crypto analysts, and influencers to attract people. They try to sell fake or never existed cryptocurrencies to the novice users. As we can seen Elon Musk is active in crypto buying so scammers do fake endorsements of him and ask people to get send 1BTC and they will return 10BTC. Moreover, they share fake proofs of their fake accounts that they get 10 or multiple BTC from Elon Musk. One must ask himself, why Elon Musk will give free BTC or money?

This type is my personal experienced one in which the scammer will send you coins or tokens in bulk quantity and their price is high. The issue is they will not allow you to convert them to any other coin through any exchange like pancakeswap and uniswap. They ask you to send all amount to their desired website and connect your wallet by putting your credentials there. Once you put your credentials/private key, the scammer immediately transfer your funds to his wallet and you will loss all of your money in few minutes.

The last one I know is the ICO crypto scam. ICO basically stands for "Initial Coin Offering" which means that before a coin listed on any exchange, there will go through ICO process where fundraising is done for the project. The owner of the coin tells the victims that they can get coin at very low price and when it will be listed on the market, you can sell at very high price. In this crypto scam type, they get the money from investors and never launch a coin and run away.

Due to the popularity of cryptocurrencies, many people in the past and still are becoming victims of crypto scam. There are few points that if you follow without greed and full attention, then they can save you from any kind of crypto scam in the future. Here are few points that help to spot crypto scams:

Guaranteed returns: No financial investment in this world can give you returns for sure. Your investment can become half or go up to double or triple. If any cryptocurrency owner is promising for the guaranteed returns, never take that as opportunity but it is a red flag or a trap.

No or poor roadmap and whitepaper: The most important part of any cryptocurrency is the proper whitepaper and roadmap. In every ICO, there is a whitepaper and if one coin has no or poor whitepaper avoid it.

Excessive marketing: There is no harm in promoting your business. But excessive marketing on social media, offline and online advertisements, paid influencers is something else. The fraudsters are trying to reach as many people as possible in short time to offer their coins and to raise money. If this is the case in the coin you are thinking to invest, stop and do some research.

Hidden team: You can see all businesses or company not only in cryptocurrency have proper team with their real names. This helps to know which person is at what position and they can be found if needed. In crypto, all scammer coins will hide their team and real names from public and show fake names. If you can't find real ones, stop thinking to invest in that project/coin.

Offering free money: Nothing in this world is free and you have to earn it. So if anyone is giving you free money in cryptocurrency, it is likely to be fake.

No, I have not yet scammed by any scammer because I have not much investment left in cryptocurrency. But I think I want to share here is a type of scam I see in my wallet but because I am an IT student, I didn't fall for it.

The scam I personally checked but was not a victim of it was fake coin. I will share the screenshot of the fake coin below. The name of the coin is MNEB and it came to my wallet in big quantity. First I checked it by swapping it to BNB and found it's price is high and I can get hundreds of BNB. But when I try to swap it to BNB, it said "The input token cannot be transferred. There may be an issue with the input token." I tried to swap it to other cryptocurrency but still the error was same. Then I do some research on this coin and found it is a scam coins.

The purpose of this coin was a victim go to the fraudsters website and connect their wallet by entering their private key. Once the key was entered, the scammer can get access to all of our funds and can transfer it to his address/wallet within few seconds. But Thank God I did not became the victim of this scam. Later I moved my funds to Binance and sold some and now have very few funds for which I am doing some testing. I suggest to not fall for such crypto scam because "THERE IS NO FREE MONEY IN THE WORLD"

Above we have discussed the types and how to spot crypto scams. Now we will see possible ways to protect ourselves from such crypto scams. To protect yourself, you need to use common sense and some security measures which are:

Protect your private key and wallet: In order to invest in cryptocurrency, you must have a digital wallet with a private key. This is needed for decentralized platforms and not for centralized platforms because in CEXs you just need to protect your password and not wallet. It is recommended to not share your private keys to any person or institution no matter what he says to you.

Send testing amount to wallet app: Before sending big amount to your wallet app, try to send a small amount like $1 or less. If the app is real, you can see your $1 there but if it is a scam app, you will immediately loss your $1.

Take time and relax: Mostly fraudsters will use high-pressure on you to invest quickly in their coin. They will show countdown timer to you and will say you have few hours left so invest right now. I suggest to take your time and do some research before investment. Don't become victim.

Not trust social media posts: Mostly fraudsters and scammers will use unauthorized celebrities images and fake endorsements to catch your attention. It is important to check the real social media account of the celebrity because a celebrity always share his/her endorsements on their social profiles.

Read whitepaper: It is important to read whitepaper of the cryptocurrency because developer will share all details in it. They will show which technology they are working on and what is the purpose of this coin. A poor or non-existence whitepaper is the sign of crypto scam.

As the cryptocurrency popularity is increasing so does the crypto scams. It is important that we protect ourselves from such crypto scams by doing proper security measures and use our common sense. A lot of people in the past have been scammed and still some are becoming victim of it. But I know from time to time, people will learn to deal with it and will no longer fall into it. My and all Steemians who are writing on this topic must share protection tips not only on Steemit but also on social media and with their friends and family so as many as possible people stay safe from such scammers doing crypto scams.

This is all from me for the "Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S6W5 - Common Crypto Scams And How To Avoid Them." I would like to invite @ranartblog, @samminator, @hunzlakhan, and @reeta0119 to take part in this contest by sharing quality content.