7 Ways To Safeguard Your Crypto Investments
Despite being in existence for only a decade, cryptocurrencies have become among investors around the world. However, this trend has also attracted the unwanted attention of cybercriminals, who see this as an opportunity to steal these treasured digital assets. Because of this, it's prudent as a crypto investor to think of ways you can protect your investments.
Don't know where to start? If you want more info, here's a guide detailing some helpful ideas on how you can best safeguard your crypto investments.
Use Cold Wallets
The use of cold storagealso known as physical walletsis one of the safest ways to safeguard your crypto investment from malicious cybercriminals. These cold wallets are available in the form of USB devices where you store private keys and encryptions needed to access your digital coins.
Accessing the cold wallet itself requires entering a password. Because cold wallets are offline, they're beyond the reach of hackers. This isn't the same with online wallets, which are usually easy targets for cybercriminals.
Set Strong Passwords
Many people use the same password across different online accounts. That is easily one of the biggest mistakes that a crypto investor can make because even a leak in a non-crypto website could give hackers access to your actual crypto account.
With this in mind, you should make an effort to come up with a password that is completely unique to your crypto account. Even more, experts strongly advise that you routinely change your passwords every few months or weeks, depending on how much you have at stake in your crypto account. You should also make sure that each password is complicated, but something you can easily remember on your own. Sure, it's a hassle, but it's a small price to pay for securing the safety of your digital assets.
Use A Secure Internet Connection
An unsecured internet connection is another vulnerability that a hacker can exploit to get into your cryptocurrency wallet. Because of this, you should avoid having your devices connect to unknown networks. This is often the case if your devices are set to automatically connect to any available network, such as with public Wi-Fi. Each time you're accessing your account while connected to an unsecured network.
You should only access crypto-related accounts when you are connected to your home's private network. On top of that, you should also consider using a virtual private network (VPN), which helps safeguard sensitive data from being retrieved by hackers. The VPN does this by changing your IP address, thereby ensuring your browsing data is secure.
Don't Share Your Secret Key
The secret key is meant to verify that the person accessing and doing transactions on the crypto account is the actual owner. You must never share this password with anyone else because anyone with access to your key has complete control over whatever is in your crypto wallet. If you need a copy of it (in case you forget), make sure that the copy itself is properly secured in a safe box or, if it's a digital copy, with password protection software.
Set Up Multifactor Authentication
Another effective way to further enhance the safety of your cryptocurrencies is by setting up multifactor authentication. With such a system in place, a prompt will pop up requiring you to add extra information, be it a text message or email, before accessing your crypto wallet. That said, you should never lend any gadget that can be used to authenticate login credentials.
Be Cautious Of Phishing
Hackers can also know of your passwords through phishing attacks by deceiving you into entering a private key or password using a fake version of the actual website. You can best prevent falling victim to such attacks by carefully examining a site before entering whatever personal information. This is especially crucial if you access your crypto wallet using mobile apps that are often viewed as easy targets.
Do Exhaustive Research On Crypto Exchanges
You must never use a cryptocurrency exchange without conducting comprehensive research on it. This way, you'll be able to confirm the security features put in place to safeguard your data and digital assets.
Therefore, take your time to read about a crypto exchange you're considering by reading online reviews to understand the experience of other users. After getting the opinion from other users who've previously used a particular crypto exchange, you'll be able to tell whether it's a reliable choice or not.
Takeaway
You must implement proper measures to protect your crypto investments to ensure you don't lose them after a wicked attack. Taking this proactive approach is advised because it's almost impossible to trace and recover these digital assets after they've been stolen. With the tips mentioned above, you should be able to keep your crypto investments safer than they were before.