I found unknown cryptocurrencies in my wallet. What should I do with them?

Have you ever found unknown tokens in your crypto wallet that you did not buy or send yourself? You should know that this is a fraud and trying to sell these tokens will result in the loss of all funds in your wallet.

I found tokens in my wallet

As we already know, the world of cryptocurrencies is full of fraudsters lurking for their victim on every corner. These fraudsters are difficult to track down, and the ignorance of newcomers to cryptocurrencies also offers them easy prey. There are an incredible number of scams, and if we wanted to name them all, it would take hours.

Today we will focus on a relatively unknown but even more dangerous scam known as Airdrop Scam. The point is that fraudsters send a number of fake worthless tokens in bulk to several crypto wallets (in 99% of cases on the Binance Smart Chain). If you now take your wallet address (not stock market) and enter it into the search on BSCscan, you will almost certainly find tokens there that you did not buy or send yourself.

But how do fraudsters rob me?

The fact that you have received tokens on your wallet does not mean anything and basically does not pose any risk for you. None until the curiosity forces you to look for this token and its details. This is because these tokens often display a false value in USD (sometimes up to hundreds of thousands). This, of course, arouses curiosity and a glimmer of greed in everyone. The fraudsters have taken the first important step – they have gained your attention.

These fake tokens cannot be exchanged or sold at any large (de) centralized exchange office. Instead, users are drawn to the fake page of the cryptocurrency, where the “Swap” feature makes it seemingly possible to sell these tokens. This is already tough, because after you attach your wallet to the site, you must then confirm the “Approve” transaction of the token to sell it, and we will suspend here.

Many people think that you will not do anything with this seemingly insignificant step. However, this step allows your wallet to interact with the smart contract and literally gives it access to your funds. Some smart contracts may have hidden codes that allow you to steal your funds without your knowledge, but with your permission. You can lose either the asset in a pair with a fake token (usually a BNB), or all the resources on the network.

But let’s go back to the paragraph above. After you give “Approve” to fraudsters, you basically give them access to your wallet and your funds are on a gold tray. The second much more common option is for the site to offer you a fake Metamask login window. You ignorantly fill in your details in this fake window = fraudsters have access to your resources again.

Even with this Airdrop Scam, there are several options and ways for fraudsters to rob you. However, they all have one thing in common – gaining access to your cryptocurrencies.

Specific fraud

Personally, the following tokens landed in my wallet:

When I looked for this coin (they deliberately put the site’s name in the name – the first warning finger), I came across a site that pretends to fight fraud. A thief screams to catch a thief. You must attach a wallet to collect these tokens. We’ll stop here.

All you have to do is enter the magic formula “Is Zepe scam?” In Google. Thad, you can see the result below. It took a few seconds and the scam is exposed.

Prevention for the future

If you have bought some shitcoins and approved various possible dubious contracts, know that this step works the other way around – you can ban contracts. You can do this, for example, via the web debank.com. There you attach a wallet, click on “Profile” on the left bar and then “Approval” in the middle of the screen. Here you will see a letter of all the contracts you have ever approved. The safest way is to always cancel these contracts if you no longer use them – click on “Decline” and confirm the transaction. You will then see the status “Revoked” in the network explorer, which means that you have denied the interaction with the given smart contract.

And the lesson?

Keep educating yourself. If time allows, always study everything you do in the cryptocurrency area in advance. There are a lot of articles on the internet about various scams, so you can check what you’re up to in minutes.

Also, ignore any tokens that come into your wallet without your intervention, 99.99% is a scam. Each normal token is tradable at exchanges, whether centralized or decentralized. If this is not the case, you have immediately raised a warning finger that it is probably a scam.