How can just a name and contact info be dangerous in the wrong hands?
In a word: phishing. Scam artists have become quite adept at saying or doing exactly the right things to part you from your money. If they have access to your status as a customer and your contact information, it’s a whole lot easier to pose as someone you might trust. It’s important to keep this in mind whenever communicating with anyone you believe to be representing a company who has access to your money or your financial information. These scammers may email or call you pretending to be from an exchange, a bank, a credit card company, etc. When emailing, they make their logos, contact info, and links look identical to those of the legitimate company, and they’ll try to make you believe that either you’re in trouble or you need to confirm your information in some way. They’ll ask for important details from you, such as passwords, social security numbers, or account numbers.
How can you keep your financial assets safe from these wrong doers?
- Make sure to use strong passwords on all accounts. Easier said than done, I know. If you’re anything like me, trying to remember random combinations of letters and numbers for even one account is a challenge, much less for multiple. It may be helpful to use a password manager like LastPass, 1Password, or Bitwarden to keep your passwords secure but accessible so that you don’t have to remember them all. It’s much safer than a random piece of paper tucked under your keyboard or a text file on your computer somewhere. Some of these password managers also have random password generators, which can be quick and helpful.
- Enable 2FA (2 factor authentication) on your exchange accounts, mining accounts, anything that would give someone access to your money or financial information. PROHASHING recommends Authy because it’s more secure than SMS 2 Factor authentication, and it allows you to put in a backup password if you get a new phone (or drop your current one in a toilet – don’t judge. I’m sure we all know someone who’s done it.).
- If you receive an email from an exchange, a mining pool, or any company that may have access to your crypto assets (or your fiat money for that matter), it’s always safest to go directly to the company’s home page to access your account. Links can be faked and can direct you to quite convincing mockups of the company websites, tricking you into entering passwords or other sensitive information. Then, the wrongdoers have access to your real account. Company representatives generally don’t call you and ask you for your account information, so if someone does call claiming to represent a company you do business with, hang up and look up the company’s number on the official company website to call them back. Also, no legitimate company is going to overpay you and then ask you to purchase and send gift cards to pay them back. I’ve seen this one floating around too. Just don’t do it.
We keep everything that we possibly can on our own servers. We use third party servers as infrequently as possible. Your mining account information, our coin data, etc. is in a database on secure, PROHASHING controlled servers. Even those marketing emails that you may receive occasionally, if you’ve provided us with your email address, don’t go through a CRM such as HubSpot. Our mailing list is hosted on our own servers, and even the template for each email is done on our own system to minimize anyone’s chances of accessing information they shouldn’t have access to. No PROHASHING employee will direct message you through Discord or the forums and ask you for account information, and, in fact, we will only discuss your private account information through our website chat, which is authenticated by you having to log into your account first so that we know that it’s you.
Somewhat ironically, in addition to our longer standing security measures, we recently instituted a check on any PROHASHING passwords. We compare current users’ passwords against a database of any passwords that have been lost/released in any data breaches. To be clear, these are not breaches against PROHASHING; they’re breaches that occurred elsewhere on the internet, similar to the one that recently occurred with HubSpot. If a user’s password shows up on that list, a notification is instantly sent to that user strongly recommending that the password is changed to one that does not show up on the leaked information list. This is also the case for new customers creating fresh accounts with new passwords, as well as for current customers who choose to change their passwords for any reason. The new passwords are compared against the leaked information database, and if they match any compromised passwords, the customer will be asked to choose a different, more secure password before being allowed to proceed.
What should we take away from all this?
The takeaway from the HubSpot breach is mainly that knowledge is power. This is not just for the criminals but also for you as a customer. It’s important to do your research. Look into what security measures are taken by businesses you are considering working with. How do they protect your information? What security measures do they take to make sure that their own employees’ accounts are secured? Do these companies contract out any part of their services to third parties? What security measures do those third-party service providers have in place? Also, try to anticipate the ways that bad actors may try to work around security features to get to you and talk you into sending your hard-earned money their way. The cryptocurrency industry’s push for decentralization is based partially on the idea that there will always be people out there trying to scam the system, but we can certainly make it hard enough on the scammers that it’s no longer worth their while.
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