People being slack (online) when it comes to personal security is certainly a major reason as to why human error is the leading factor in scam / fraud / theft of peoples crypto.

I’ll start by saying I work in an investigative role. Have relatively good knowledge of computing but I’m in no way a pro when it comes to crypto but Im not a noob either.

It’s amazing the amount of posts you see here where people got scammed, but what amazes me more is when you click their profile and see just how slack they were.

The biggest tip I can give anyone using the CC sub safely is use a unique account for your crypto discussion and don’t give unnecessary information(give your location as eastern Europe, not poland for example) and a separate username for all other subs.

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An example of one person I’ll use just to show how easy it can be: he advertised himself a “whole coiner”: 10 minutes after checking his post history I could tell which European city he was in, which car he drives, his hobbies etc. 20 min later i knew his father was suffering from cancer, when and where he was going on vacation and the airline he was using that wasn’t very helpful when he tried to change flights due to his dad having an op. A deeper search online lead to his social media and revealed his real name phone number, DOB and photograph.

The scammer now has his name, username, email, home address,dob, photo, phone number, car details, family’s medical history etc.

Are these details irrelevant though? Absolutely not: how easy would it be for a scammer to ring and say “Hello joe, I’m calling from X airlines, Iv been assigned to try resolve your complaint, I’m sorry to hear about your father and apologise for how you’ve been treated. One second and I’ll just bring up your flight details… I can see you’re going to Italy in May. Iv been given authorisation to refund you 50% of the price as a gesture of good will. How would you like to be paid, cheque (address please) refund to card (card details please), bank transfer (details please)…and you could probably pull a bit of extra information out of that call or be creative and set him up for a phishing scam (TOO MANY PEOPLE USE THE SAME PASSWORD FOR EVERYTHING!)

Now that scammer has his address… and knows he (probably) has a seed phrase left at an address he know will be unoccupied for 7 days. Easy target?

The scammer has several scam / theft options including charging the victims cards, burglarising his home, logging into his exchange account or simply finding him and physically robbing him.

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I’ll say how easy I managed to get the info to hopefully make people aware how easy it is and change their mindset.

Previous posts: a pic of a room in his home with a visible UK socket on the wall, a post in the cancer sub relating to his father.a question about changing the key battery for his make/model car. Google helped locate him on another forum where he had a link to Facebook video he posted under his real name. A search of his name brought me to a review he left for the airline with his phone number etc.

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Sorry for the long post, but it might change some peoples mindset and save them in the long run.

A few simple steps :

-use unique Reddit user name for crypto talk. Don’t use the same username is CC that you use to discuss everything else in your life.

-don’t give too much info

-don’t use same passwords (use a password manager!!!!)