Helping you securely manage your Cardano blockchain wallets!
1st thing first.
If you were airdropped one of our token, we think your assets may have been targeted by scammers.
If not, the following information could still be useful.
What now
If you find new tokens you did not acquire in your wallet, please tread very carefully.
Your best protection is to
ALWAYS verify the transaction you are about to sign (provide a password for)
NEVER provide your seed phrase other than when you restore your wallet
What to do next
These tokens are useless, but will not do any harm if left alone.
If you feel the NEED to get them out of your wallet,read-me-first has created a few colourfully named Ada handles for you to express your frustration at the scam attempts. Feel free to send them there.
The handles are
$-black-hole- : if you want the token to feel pressure at a cosmic scale. $-destroyer- : personally I imagine it in one of those mega stone crusher. $-garbage- : pretty vanilla, but by now maybe you are used to this happening and don’t get too wound up about it.
If you feel like you have to get them out of your wallet, feel free to send them to one of the following ADA Handles $-black-hole- $-destroyer- $-garbage- Hey... might as well be original!
We read the blockchain, as you probably know it is a public ledger, and identify wallets that have received certain tokens, using multiple criteria such as
When was the token created
How is the token distributed
Does the token have the same name as another
Does the token link to a website that is very similar to another one or has already been identified as a scammer site
We also crowd source the offending tokens and websites name, but we do our own research
and more...
How we do it
About Us
Pretty much a guy in his garage ( getting helps form generous people ) dedicated to promoting the safe usage of Cardano wallets.
email @ Contact@read-me-first.io
verify the transaction before signing?
Simply put, because SOME scammers add items to transactions and once the transaction is signed... it's all gone.
Let me explain how this happens. We'll use an online store analogy. On a legit online store, you browse, add 2 items to the basket, an item is selling for $5.25, the other one for each item is selling for for $12.25. You are done shopping and move on to the "cart" page, it shows you the 2 items with pictures (pretty obvious if extra items show up here). You move on to the "checkout" page, the page presents the cost of the item (no picture), $17.50, the tax (let's go with 10%) $1.75, and the total $19.25... you accept and are done.
It is human nature, after having been on many of these online store to not pay too much attention on the last page before actually paying since a review of the items from the shopping cart was previously done. This is what the scammers exploit.
On the scammy.com online store, the experience is the same all the way to the last page, you add 2 items to the basket, same 2 items, same prices, you move on to the "cart" page, it shows you the 2 items with pictures. You move on to the "checkout" page. This is where differences start to show... the page presents MORE than the cost of the items, maybe it adds a "0" at the end on the cost so that a quick look would still show the correct digits but with the "." one digit to the right... you accept and are done. But instead of getting your 2 items, you get nothing and paid 10 times more than you thought you were going to pay.
What this looks like on a Cardano wallet is that the on th signing interface, just before you sign the transaction and accept it as legit, because a blockchain is an open ledger and the scammer can know how much Ada and what other assets are in your wallet, the scammers add the full content of your wallet to the transaction... and if, like on an online store, the user does not review the details of the transaction being signed, the content of the wallet is transferred to the scammers wallet and there is noting anybody can do to return the stolen assets.
So please... always review the transaction details before signing it.
protect my seed phrase any way I can?
Simply put, because ANYBODY that knows your seed phrase can steal all you Ada and any other assets. Let me explain with an analogy. Your seed phrase ( the words you had to backup when your wallet was created ) are like GPS coordinates on a very large map, but instead of leading you to a treasure on a desert island, they lead you to your Ada, NFTs and other assets.
You have these coordinates very well secured or memorized. If you want to get to your treasure, you turn on your favourite GPS device, enter the coordinates and the a screen shows you a map with a location. You add a tag to the location that makes it easy for you to remember what's there, for example "My_Ada_Stash", and because this is a location you want to keep secret, you enter a password on the GPS device in order to keep people from using the GPS and the tag. If anybody else gets access to the coordinates, they will follow the same steps on another GPS and can go and get the treasure.
It is the exact same thing with your seed phrase. If I get access to these words, I start up my favorite Ada wallet software instead of the GPS device, I enter your seed phrase instead of GPS coordinates, I give it a name such as "the_Ada_I_will_steal" and provide my own password... it can be "abc123" and I will have access to whatever is a that address.
So please never share your seed phrase with anybody.
We are glad we may just have saved you [your wallet balance], but it costs us transaction fees to do it. To help us keep dong this work, please consider sending a small donation to this Ada handle
$read-me-first
OR
Keep an eye out for our coming Cardano stake pool
Ticker : RMF (read-me-first)
Have a good morning/afternoon/evening/night wherever you are!
Stay safe!
Before you leave