Many people who have never traded have asked me what to do in these situations. These scammy exchanges are always ahead of the game and will take your money, leaving you with no recourse. You can take various precautions when trading online, such as looking up known addresses for the exchange on sites like bitcode method and Crypto coins.
This post covers eight ways to protect yourself from getting scammed while purchasing Bitcoin or trading alt-coins online.
1. Choosing the Right Exchange
This is one of the best tips anyone can give you when trading online. Choosing the right exchange is crucial to ensuring you have a trustworthy place to trade. You should always check online reviews of an exchange before depositing any money with them.
2. Never Deposit Withdrawable Funds
Many scam exchanges will ask you to deposit Withdrawable funds like PayPal or other cards into their site. This is a huge red flag because most legitimate exchanges don’t require you to use your card as an exchange.
3. Read the Website Carefully
Most scam websites are based on the same template and have very small differences in their interface, making them easy to spot after having seen a few of them.
4. Check Website URLs
Usually, the URL of a scammy website will be something like “http://ex.ph” (this is an example), where ex. Ph. is a random fake domain name that you can get from a free service provided by Google. This means that you will find a different URL.
5. Never Trust and Admin
Many of the same scammy sites use a free hosting service, and the admin will likely have a fake account on most of them. These sites are usually stored on an Amazon/L2 hosting server, and you can tell if it’s a free host simply by looking up the IP address to see if it looks familiar.
6. Try to Get a Bitcointalk Forum Thread on the Site
Sometimes people need to learn how important this is, but looking up a scammy site on Google and seeing if a Bitcoin talk forum thread exists on the same domain can save you money in the future.
7. Try to Find Scam Names That Have Been Cited Already
This is the same as finding a forum thread, but it should be done if you have time. Find the scam exchange on Google, look up its website (if you can), and search for any complaints made.
8. Check the URL to See If It’s A Captcha or Not
Don’t input the scam exchange’s URL directly into your browser because it will require a Captcha. If you see that, that means that the site is a scam.
Many of the same scams have been reported over and over again year after year, so they will always be there looking to fool victims into sending money to them. Always research and ensure you’re not being scammed before sending any money anywhere online. Try bitcode method today!