The security of any wallet depends solely and exclusively on you

For those who are not familiar yet, here are some of the most common types of attacks against wallets and how they drain your wallet, corrupt your funds, and steal your money. You probably ask yourself: "How can they do this? I did everything right," and start thinking you're not smart or clever enough, that DeFi is a scam, or that this type of investment isn't for you, and here is the answer:

In fact, keeping your wallet safe is much simpler than you might think. You just need to avoid any of these methods being used against you, and you will have infinitely more chances of staying safe using any self-custody wallet, such as Metamask, Trust Wallet, or Phantom. All wallets basically use the same standard (based on BIP-39 for seed phrase generation), and as a professional Blockchain Security Analyst and Forensic Investigator, I can say that in more than 90% of exploitation cases, it is the human factor that makes the attack possible.

The most common is through your SEED PHRASE

Many people usually interact with tokens just because an influencer or YouTuber is promoting them or someone shared a malicious site disguised as an investment or airdrop in a group. Once you access the site, it asks you to type your seed phrase, and you simply type it in without knowing it’s a scam. You should never enter your seed phrase on any website, this is never necessary. The only procedure needed to interact with Dapps is to connect your wallet.

Your seed phrase is only used to access your wallet on a device you haven’t used before. Once you have created your wallet and written down your 12 words on a piece of paper, the only operations you should normally perform are transfers and granting permissions to trusted contracts, not to just any random token or airdrop contract.

Another one is the Approval Exploit

Granting permissions is also a risk, and this brings us to another common type of exploit, the "malicious approval attack". When you access unknown websites, click on Telegram, Reddit, Twitter links, ads, emails, and visit platforms offering tokens or services you are not familiar with. Many of these approaches may be compromised, and when you connect your wallet and sign permissions, you allow scammers to steal your money.

Scammers often use malicious token standards or contracts configured to drain your wallet through the approval of spending permissions. Others may exploit transaction logic (such as fake swaps), draining funds through abusive transaction fees. This confuses you, because trusted smart contracts also ask for permission to use your money, but they do not steal from you, they manage it in the correct way.

Want to avoid this headache and loss?

Stay away from "magic money," suspicious airdrops, donation schemes, and investments promising high fixed returns (1%, 2%, 3% per day, 30% per month, etc...). Study the protocol, the team, verify if the project really exists and if you are on the correct website. There are phishing attempts on sites like Etherscan (fake "Permit Activated"), on Solscan, on crypto news websites, and especially in Google search results.

Check the company’s official page on X (Twitter) or LinkedIn. Get the official link directly from the company’s verified page on social media. Do not type your seed phrase, do not store it on your computer in screenshots, text files, or emails. Do not grant permissions to sites you are not completely sure or familiar with.

Regardless of which wallet you use, if you do not pay attention to these details, your funds will be compromised.