Security News > 2022 > June > How to keep your NFTs safe from scammers
"Most often associated with digital art, NFTs are considered to be the modern equivalent of an art collection. Only a certain number of NFTs are produced for a project and they have a variety of traits, which can contribute to the value of an NFT from a rarity standpoint," Narang explains.
"Most of the popular NFT projects are what are called PFPs projects like CryptoPunks or Bored Apes. Buyers acquire these and use them as their profile pictures on social media, because social media has become our digital art gallery. While it's true that anyone can right click and save a PFP from one of these projects and claim it for their own, because these are blockchain based projects, there is a way to verifiably prove ownership. Twitter recognized the value of NFTs as PFPs, which is why they started offering the ability for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to verify ownership of their NFTs on the blockchain in a more transparent way."
"Some experienced users may choose to store their NFTs in cold wallets, which are offline wallets that aren't connected to the internet. Cold wallets include hardware wallets like a Ledger or Trezor, which require a user to safely store a private key offline in order to access their funds or NFTs in their cold wallet."
"There's often a window of opportunity afforded to scammers to target NFT projects that are trying to add more value for their holders. These projects will do things like offer airdrops of tokens that are only granted to NFT holders or plans to pivot into things like the metaverse, where holders of these NFTs can get first dibs on a piece of digital land in the project's metaverse," Narang explains.
Scammers can go after owners of NFTs through impersonations of the various projects or through generalized cryptocurrency phishing that gives an attacker control of the victim's wallet.
It's better to miss out on a potential up and coming NFT project than to have all of your cryptocurrency and NFTs stolen from your wallet, he opines, and advises NFT owners to consider using cold storage for their NFTs and other digital assets.