Your plan if you get hacked
Lesson 16 of 16 in the course “Cybersecurity from Scratch”. Free, with animations and a quiz.
Order beats speed
When something happens, panic makes you do everything at once from the same infected laptop. Don’t. First grab a clean device, like your phone. Lock your exchange account: on many exchanges that’s in security settings or through in-app support. Then change your email password and log out of all devices, because email is the key to everything. If you have your own wallet, move what’s left to a new one created from scratch on a clean device.
The third wave of scammers
Victims often post about a hack on social media, and “crypto recovery experts” show up right away. They promise to trace your coins for an upfront fee, then ask for more and more. The FBI has specifically warned about these schemes. Real help comes from the exchange the money went through and from the police in your country. File a report even if the odds are low: exchanges and stablecoin issuers can freeze stolen funds based on it.
What you have now
The hackers who took $6.3 billion from Binance were hunting a giant exchange. But against ordinary people, simple things work: a reused password, an SMS code, a “test task”, a link in an email, a signature without looking. The five points in the picture cover almost everything this course talked about. Take the final trainer and compare the result with your very first check. Then share this course with someone you worry about.
Check yourself
- Dan sees someone tried to withdraw from his exchange account. What first?
Correct answer: Lock the exchange account from a clean phone. Locking stops withdrawals, and a clean device won’t leak the new password. - After the hack an “expert” offers to recover Dan’s coins for a 10% upfront fee. What is it?
Correct answer: Another scam. An upfront fee for “recovery” is a typical scheme the FBI has warned about. - Why file a report even if the odds are low?
Correct answer: Exchanges and issuers can freeze stolen funds based on it. Even in the Binance hack, Tether and Circle froze part of the funds. An official report helps make that happen.