I can not believe it, but yesterday I fell for a crypto scam! Normally I am pretty good at spotting if something looks dodgy, but this one completely got me and I should have known better. So let me tell you the story.
I was at my computer reading through some hive blog posts of other authors when a message came up on my discord chat which looked to be coming from the SandBox discord group that I am in. Without thinking I clicked on the link which took me to a SandBox land sale. The URL and webpage looked pretty legit and they had designed it in such a way that it appeared that users were purchasing the land sale.
Given that I had missed out on land sales before and it looked like time was running out, I rushed into sending the crypto they were asking without even thinking. I was so caught up in the rush to be on it, my brain totally switched off. I will not pass on the URL as I do not want others to be scammed, however this is what it looks like below.
I just pressed mint accepted the meta-mask transaction and my ether was spent. I was sooo stupid, I cant even believe I did it.
I then immediately realized the mistake I had made when I didn't check the URL correctly, the fact I didn't log into the website and the fact the discord group was wrong. I was so caught up in the rush to get in on it my brain turned off. Expensive lesson.
It made me realize that the world of crypto is still the wild west. There is no recourse for me to get my money back, it is gone. I read in the news yesterday that millions of dollars in crypto's has been stolen when people have downloaded fake wallets from the internet or the apps store. They look legit, but you will never see your money again.
As you can imagine I had a pretty bad sleep last night. My mind thinking about what happened and what a fool I was. The steps the fraudsters made trick me were pretty simple.
- Pretend they are the legit deal
- Playing on people's fear of missing out by putting that minted timer on their site
- Making it super easy to part with your crypto
This is the first time I have been scammed and it makes you feel rotten. I would love to hear if others have experienced something similar!