[trompetenaccoun]

It turns out you're not the first person to realize that this is an issue. If you'd actually read up on cryptocurrency wallets before commenting, you might have found there are multiple solutions for this out already, including one of the most popular Ethereum wallets called Argent, which let's you set limits.

Basically the fraud described is a twist on the classic "Musk giving away BTC" scam that's all over Youtube because Google is apparently unable to prevent it. You have to be fairly naive to fall for it in the first place. But ok, no victim-blaming. The way you can prevent it on smart contract platforms is simply holding the funds in a smart contract that allows users to set restrictions so that they couldn't take that expensive NFT even if the user mindlessly clicks on a fishing link, connects the wallet and approves the transaction without checking what it is. Same as having a withdrawal limit on your bank card. And you can also whitelist wallets, the contract then automatically blocks any transfers to untrusted wallets. If the user manually overrides this by getting his guardians to agree, there's no stopping them of course.

Ultimately you won't be able to protect everyone. A determined enough fool can also go to Western Union and mail money to the scammer. In the US they have those prepaid card scammers. Or they come to your home, telling you they're police and need to inspect your valuables. Yes, that's a real actual scam that exists in Europe.

[PragmaticPulp]

> If you'd actually read up on cryptocurrency wallets before commenting, you might have found there are multiple solutions for this out already, including one of the most popular Ethereum wallets called Argent, which let's you set limits.

You're making a great example of the victim-blaming I mentioned in my comment: That anyone who is surprised by their money disappearing clearly just didn't do all of the right research and use the right wallets and set all the right options to set the right limits and so on and so on.

Obviously there are right ways to navigate the crypto space and not get burned, but the issue is that the crypto community seems to think it's okay that everything is complicated and prone to new users making mistakes that people are routinely losing huge amounts of money due to not being 100% up to date on the right way to do everything.

> The way you can prevent it on smart contract platforms is simply holding the funds in a smart contract that allows users to set restrictions so that they couldn't take that expensive NFT even if the user mindlessly clicks on a fishing link, connects the wallet and approves the transaction without checking what it is.

Yep, sounds easy. To avoid losing everything you just have to set up a smart contract and then...

I can't believe this stuff passes for reasonable suggestions in the crypto world.

[mitchdoogle]

You ignored the part about how people are scammed using credit cards, cash, wires, etc. The problem isn't crypto - it's dishonest people developing scams to trick others into sending money. I'd bet that far more money is lost in scams using methods that don't depend on cryptocurrency rather than the ones that do. Just like with those other scams, education is a very important part of prevention.

[captn3m0]

With other scams, it’s supremely hard for scammers to cash out without a clear identity trace to follow. As a simple example, the huge explosion in ransomware is directly linked to the rise in cryptocurrency, because prior to that getting paid for ransomware was much tougher.

With Crypto, payments are irreversible, all transactions are transfers, all payees are equal (no merchants for payments and P2P for transfers) and it all combines together to be the perfect scammer heaven - you can scam people without any repercussions anonymously.

[trompetenaccoun]

It's an app that you download and setting up is so easy an 8 year old can do it. No one has to deploy a smart contract on their own, you just go to the app store and install it. It's inexplicable to me why someone would complain about software they've clearly never used or even looked at.

Of course people can use other wallets if they like to. These are open networks just like the internet itself. No one can stop folks from doing dumb stuff online, input their credit card information where they shouldn't, wire thousands of dollars to a "girl" overseas who "loves" them, visit shady sites with their outdated Internet Explorer on a WindowsXP machine... Why didn't Microsoft prevent this!?

[infotogivenm]

> The way you can prevent it on smart contract platforms is simply holding the funds in a smart contract that allows users to set restrictions so that they couldn't take that expensive NFT even if the user mindlessly clicks on a fishing link, connects the wallet and approves the transaction without checking what it is.

Yes, so simple! Just put your coins into this website’s smart contract and you’ll be much more secure.

[trompetenaccoun]

It's not a website. Read this if you're unsure what a smart contract is: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/smart-contracts/

Btw yes, from a user perspective it actually is very simple and easy to use. It's a good wallet for beginners. Most who're more active and understand the tech have hardware wallets. You could combine the two solutions as well.

[jensvdh]

Good luck explaining that to the supposedly unbanked crypto is trying to reach.

[trompetenaccoun]

Do you explain TLS to casual internet users? I'd like to see that.

The regular non-tech savvy user doesn't necessarily have to understand the details. That's why people are working on such solutions in the first place. Someone experienced with blockchains would never connect their wallet to a random stranger's and approve draining their funds. However the massive hype around them has brought in a lot of new users.

Wallets have come a long way from people writing their private key on a piece of paper back in the early days. The above complaint is bizarre in this context, because what they described is the exact opposite of what's actually happened. Every reputable wallet team has worked hard on improving security over the past years using strategies like social recovery, multi sig, cold storage of keys, etc.

[uncomputation]

> smart contract that allows users to set restrictions so that they couldn't take that expensive NFT

If they got someone to execute a malicious transaction, couldn’t the scammer just `curl etherscan.io/VICTIM`, get the restriction amount and go just under that? With normal banking, everything is closed so you can’t access that kind of information that easily, but since crypto is so open, isn’t this possible?

[ikt]

How do you go under a restriction to not take a users digital items? The restriction is, you have access to X which is being traded, not X+Y+Z.