Airdrop hunting can be fun but scam prevention precautions are always wise.
Cryptocurrency can be risky due to market volatility and lack of regulation. Use reputable platforms, avoid emotional trading, and only invest what you can afford to lose. Be cautious and remember, not your keys, not your crypto.
If you’re in the crypto space, you’re probably no stranger to airdrops. But you’re probably also no stranger to scams too. So when the two come together and you receive an airdrop allocation, naturally the scammers come out to play as well.
It’s fair to say that legitimising the space means controlling spammers and providing resources around scam prevention as well as other measures to help protect your tokens. So with this in mind, we’ll show you how to claim your Kamino airdrop via the official links and then take a quick look at some of the scams that were floating around social media and reported at the same time. Let’s go!
Claim Your Allocation
The advice for staying secure within the space will vary from person to person but one thing that is consistently hard to argue against is using only official sources of information. While it won’t eliminate all risks, it will make it a lot more difficult for hackers to target your wallet.
Kamino posts official announcements via their X account and you can also find regular updates within the Kamino portal, which also happens to be the best place and only place to claim your allocation.
Clicking the KMNO tab will take you to the allocation checker.
When we’re looking at official updates, it’s also useful to know what stages the process is currently at. Looking at our current Kamino example shows us that we can see via the official sources that is now claimable.
When looking for indicators of fraud it’s helpful to understand that scammers will often paint a picture that looks pretty close to the official site, but will usually contain one or two errors that you can use to see that things aren’t quite legitimate. Now on that happy note, let’s have a quick look at some of the said bad actors that are attempting to profit off this airdrop event.
In the Wild
In today's environment, Twitter / X is a popular place for crypto-based scams to be launched. Covering everything from pig butchering scams right through to wallet drainers and information harvesting, you won’t have to look far to find malicious activity. Let’s see what we’ve got and then take a look at some of the engagements to find out what sort of reach they are getting.
This one isn't particularly sophisticated and is easily identifiable with the unofficial account, bad claim time and unrelated URL. Scams like these are much easier to spot but will often mask many of these factors in an attempt to look legitimate.
Here’s another that's identifiable by similar means. It’s even using the same link from the earlier example. We can see that with just 241 views it’s still managed to collect some engagement. In 2020 though, 4 billion was lost to crypto scams so surely we can do better than that.
Here's one with nearly 4k views. While engagement numbers still aren’t super high, you can see that some of these accounts still manage to attempt legitimacy via engagement numbers alone. And again we see the same link being used.
More OSINT, now!
If you’re interested in checking further there are a few steps we can take off social media that will help us gain more insight into something that may be a potential scam. And it’ll use one of our favourite techniques for doing so, namely, Open Source Intelligence or OSINT.
Firstly, whois data is extremely useful for this. Scam domains often won’t last long without being reported, so a domain that is newly registered is typically a good sign that something may require more attention. Check whois information via this link
Next up, we can use link analysis tools by providers like VirusTotal to tell us if a link might be malicious or flagged as a security risk. Remember though, a link may not have been flagged as malicious yet so it’s typically good practice to carry out more than one check if you have concerns. Access the full range of VirusTotal services via this link.
It’s in your hands
The best measures to provide protection are often ones you’ve implemented yourself, meaning you’re not reliant on others. While it won’t prevent you from things like exchange collapses and smart contract hacks, having good practices around wallet management and self-custody will reduce your risks while you’re navigating through the space. You can read more about such practices by looking at some of our earlier articles that focus on various topics like this.
Lastly, if you’re interested in learning more about the world of Web3 and Crypto then you’re in luck. Over the net two months, we’ll be releasing beginner-level articles that focus on everything from wallets to liquidity pools and defi services. We’ll also be giving away a pre-loaded wallet to one lucky follower to help kick start their Solana experience.
So, if you’re wanting to up your crypto game, you’ve come to the right place!
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