Safety practices to avoid NFT scams

As you race to collect apes, punks, blocks, doodles, fish, cats, and land, here are some suggestions for how to protect yourself and your virtual assets:

• Look for red flags such as unfamiliar or unexpected contract calls. Never sign a transaction you do not 100% trust. Simply signing a transaction may give a thief access to all your NFTs and cryptocurrency.
• Never click on a link, button, or attachment when a contract appears to “fail” or “encounter problems.” Never click on links in emails unless you verify them through a side channel or find the same information through a parallel web search.
• Use a separate wallet for your NFTs; or set up a “burner” wallet to test interactions with contracts you are not sure are safe.
• Check the history of an NFT before buying; you could be purchasing stolen goods.
• When buying, dig into the counterparty. When you look into their transactions, you may see they have repeated the same pattern of acquiring an NFT ‘for free’ and flipping it for sale on the open market.
• Check the price. If it is much lower than the prices on legitimate markets, it is probably a scam.
• Check the address and verify where the NFT was minted.
• Drop the seller’s address into a Twitter or blog search and see if it catches fire.
• Check your current token approvals on Etherscan here. Revoke those you no longer need.
• Check which sites are connected to your MetaMask wallet by clicking on the 3-dots button. Delete those you no longer use (see images below).
• Beware of fake offers, giveaways, airdrops, technical support, and minting sites.
• Turn off your Discord DMs. Ping phishing is all the rage.
• And, as always, never give your private keys or seed phrases to anyone for any reason.

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