Meet Vault12 at the Mansion House Summit in London, September 13, 2024.

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Vault12 Blog

How to Protect Yourself From Impersonators on Telegram

As members of our Telegram community, you may encounter scammers impersonating admins and others — please read this article to understand how to avoid entanglements.


If you do not want to be taken advantage of by scammers, please remember:

  • None of the Vault12 team members will ever ask you for money or cryptocurrencies. You should NEVER transfer any to them. We will never ask for you to send your contributions to a wallet address that we provide on Telegram. All crypto transfers related to Vault12 are found in your Vault12 app.
  • If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
  • Never give out your personal details, even email addresses on the Telegram chat. If an admin gets in touch with you via a private message, make sure their username (listed below) is correct before engaging in any discussion.
  • See this in-depth investigation by the New York Times into Telegram security.

1. Check Your Telegram Privacy Settings

Telegram gives users a number of privacy settings to control information being accessed, e.g. your telephone number. Make sure you've reviewed the settings to hide information that doesn't belong in public.

Image of Telegram Privacy and Security Settings

Telegram Privacy and Security Settings

2. Identify admins

Check if they have "admin" titles beside their names on the Telegram channel member list.

To see the member list, just click on "members" or "info".

Admins for Telegram group

Look for the admin or owner tag

3. Check member @usernames to determine if you are talking to the right person

You may get messages from scammers pretending to be team members with their exact same photo/avatar and a very similar username. Please report those accounts to TG so that they get banned.

Just click on the photo/avatar of the person you are talking to, to check their username and compare this with our list of admin usernames:

Official Vault12 team members:

Telegram admins

@wasima

@max_vault12

@commagere

@pavlo1

@anastasiapopova

4. SIM Swapping - Another potential attack risk

SIM swapping

The other common attack is via a SIM swap, this is where your phone number is ported to another device, followed by account password resets — the recovery codes now being under the control of the criminal. To guard against this you need to implement 2FA with an app such as Authy, and to have your carrier explicitly forbidden to do number ports to new devices without verifying identity. Please see this article for more details: https://www.wired.com/story/sim-swap-attack-defend-phone/

5. Remember these two things

* Do not transfer your funds to addresses received in private messages
* Block and report any suspicious behavior and spam messages — this will help Telegram remove these impersonators.

Join Us on official channels for current updates

Team: https://vault12.com/team

Blog: https://vault12.com/blog

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_Vault12_

Website: https://vault12.com

White Paper: https://bit.ly/vault12-whitepaper

Announcement Channel: https://t.me/Vault12official

Support Channel: https://t.me/Vault12

https://linkedin.com/in/wasima
https://twitter.com/wasima
https://startag.xyz/wasima
Vault12 Blog

How to Protect Yourself From Impersonators on Telegram

As members of our Telegram community, you may encounter scammers impersonating admins and others — please read this article to understand how to avoid entanglements.

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Wasim Ahmad

Wasim is a serial entrepreneur and an advisor in the fields of AI, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and encryption solutions. At Vault12, he led the private and public fundraising efforts and focuses today on expanding the Vault12 ecosystem. His crypto experience began with AlphaPoint, where he worked with the founding team to launch the world's first crypto trading exchanges. Previously he was a founding member of Voltage Security, a spinout from Stanford University, that launched Identity-Based Encryption (IBE), a breakthrough in Public Key Cryptography, and pioneered the use of sophisticated data encryption to protect sensitive data across the world's payment systems. Wasim serves on the board of non-profit, StartOut, and is a Seedcamp and WeWork Labs global mentor.

Wasim graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and French from the University of Sussex.

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Vault12

Vault12 is the pioneer in crypto inheritance and backup. The company was founded in 2015 to provide a way to enable everyday crypto customers to add a legacy contact to their cry[to wallets. The Vault12 Guard solution is blockchain-independent, runs on any mobile device with biometric security, and is available in Apple and Google app stores.

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Backup and Inheritance for Bitcoin

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You will lose your Bitcoin and other crypto when you die...

You will lose your Bitcoin and other crypto when you die...

...unless you set up Crypto Inheritance Management today.

It's simple — if you don't worry about crypto inheritance, nobody else will — not your software or hardware wallet vendors, not your exchanges, and not your wealth managers. So it's up to you to think about how to protect the generational wealth you have created, and reduce the risks around passing that wealth on to your family and heirs. What are the challenges with crypto inheritance?

  • Crypto Wallets are difficult to use and do not offer crypto inheritance management. In fact, most of them tell you to write down your seed phrase on a piece of paper, which is practically useless.
  • Some people back up their wallet seed phrases or private keys on paper, local devices like hardware wallets or USBs, or in the cloud. All of these options have severe drawbacks that range from hacking to accidental loss to disrupted cloud services.
  • Software wallets operate onspecific blockchains, yet your crypto assets span multiple blockchains. For inheritance to work, you must be able to manage inheritance across every blockchain — now and forever.
Vault12 is the pioneer in crypto inheritance management. Watch our explainer video above, or our inheritance demo today.
Screenshot of Vault12 Guard apps - Add an Asset screen

Crypto Inheritance Management: Get ready today

Vault12 is the pioneer in Crypto Inheritance Management, and offers an easy-to-use and secure method for assigning a legacy contact to your crypto wallets. Vault12 Guard enables you to pass on your wallet seed phrases and private keys for any cryptos including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to future generations. It's designed for everyday people, yet strong enough for Crypto OGs.

This innovative, decentralized system uses a hybrid approach of software fused with the Secure Element of phone devices (the Secure Enclave for iOS devices, and Strongbox for Google devices).

Vault12 Guard enables users to appoint one or more people or mobile devices as Guardians. The designated Guardians are entrusted to collectively protect the user's comprehensive collection of wallet seed phrases and private keys, which are safely stored within a decentralized digital Vault. Nothing is stored on cloud servers or Vault12 servers, and no assets are stored on local devices, making them less of a target.

The decentralized approach reduces points of failure and removes the necessity for regularly revising wallet inventories or modifying instructions for your lawyers (which could lead to privacy breaches). Simply put, Vault12 Guard is the best way to preserve crypto generational wealth.

Screenshot of Vault12 Guard app - Adding data into the Vault

Take the first step and back up your crypto wallets.

Designed to be used alongside traditional hardware and software crypto wallets, Vault12 Guard helps cryptocurrency owners back up their wallet seed phrases and private keys (assets) without storing anything in the cloud or any single location. This increases protection and decreases the risks of loss. Making sure you have an up to date back up is the first step in crypto inheritance management.

The Vault12 Guard app enables secure decentralized backups and provides inheritance for all your seed phrases and private keys across any blockchain, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, ERC-20, and other crypto wallets.

Note: For anyone unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies, Vault12 refers to wallet seed phrases and private keys as assets, crypto assets, and digital assets. The Vault12 Guard app includes a software wallet that works alongside your digital Vault. The primary purpose of this is to guard your Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) wallet seed phrases, private keys, and other essential data, now and for future generations.