1. Someone from your crypto exchange calls: hackers are attacking your account, move your assets to a new secure wallet. You:
Answer: Hang up — exchanges don’t make these calls. A man posing as Coinbase support took about USD 16M from around 100 users this way (Brooklyn DA, sentenced 2026).
2. An email gives you a ready-made recovery phrase to set up your “new wallet.” Why is that dangerous?
Answer: Whoever wrote the phrase controls the wallet. In 2025 a “Migrate to Coinbase Wallet” email linked only to real pages but supplied the phrase. Anyone who used it handed over the wallet.
3. That pre-made phrase email passed security checks. How?
Answer: It was sent through a legitimate mailing service. It was sent through SendGrid with a real-looking reply address, so authentication passed (BleepingComputer, 2025).
4. Asked for your seed or recovery phrase by “support,” the right answer is:
Answer: Never share it with anyone. No real company needs your recovery phrase. Anyone who has it can empty the wallet.
5. CoinbasePro.com versus pro.coinbase.com — what’s the difference?
Answer: One was a fake site that stole over USD 20M. A group used the lookalike CoinbasePro.com with a fake support number and remote-desktop sessions (DOJ WDNC, 2024).
6. Which type of fraud caused the largest losses reported to the FBI in 2025?
Answer: Investment fraud. Investment fraud led with USD 8.65 billion in losses — more than BEC and tech-support scams together (FBI IC3).
7. An “account manager” calls about your trading account: it’s up 38%, deposit more to unlock premium. Most likely:
Answer: A call-centre script. Operation Ghost Call shut down Tirana call centres in April 2026 that used this script; victims lost over EUR 50M (Eurojust).
8. A video of a prime minister promotes a trading platform. In Italy in 2025, what was it?
Answer: A deepfake on a cloned site. Italy’s regulator CONSOB blocked sites using fake videos of PM Meloni and a minister to push the “Avenixio” platforms.
9. To withdraw your profits, the platform asks you to pay a “tax” or “release fee” first. This means:
Answer: The profits aren’t real. Pay-to-unlock fees are a classic advance-fee signal. Real platforms deduct fees, they don’t demand new deposits.
10. Before investing with any platform, the quickest real check is:
Answer: Look it up in your financial regulator’s register. Unregistered providers, or domains on a regulator’s blocklist, are among the clearest warnings you can check yourself.