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“Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

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Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#161

Post by kahnclusions »

cowtools wrote: post #143
jensvdh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because credit cards have consumer protection and laws and regulations. Crypto has none of that.

Credit cards wouldn't need such stringent "protection" and surveilance if they were secure and dependable in the first place. Of course cryptocurrencies do not have such regulations. the purpose of cryptocurrency is to facilitate exchange with untrusted parties.

The point is that cryptocurrencies are not secure nor dependable in the way that people actually need them to be, and they don’t solve any of the actual problems that people have with the banking and credit system.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#162

Post by OJFord »

cstejerean wrote: post #128
zeven7 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you have a good bank. Or maybe I've just received incorrect information about the differences between a credit and debit card.

The difference is with a debit card you are out the money until it gets resolved. With a credit card you aren’t. But most banks will extend the same fraud protections regardless.

I think debit cards are more variable with bank and perhaps jurisdiction - credit cards somewhat naturally come with such protection since as a user your agreement is with the issuer (and hand wave, hand wave, ability to authorise payments) not the vendor.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#163

Post by majormajor »

cowtools wrote: post #152
Gigachad wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these scams, crashes, and exploits are things that happens previously with regular currencies and have since been regulated away. Now crypto comes in with unregulated currency and runs in to every issue the regulations existed to prevent.

These scams, crashes, are exploits are non-issues to anyone with a reasonable degree of competence and skepticism. The solution is not to "fix" the system by removing user agency so that even an idiot can use it safely, but to educate users so that an idiot doesn't need to use cryptocurrency in the first place. This criticism of cryptocurrency would be analogous to criticizing the concept of fiat currency by pointing…

You can't both want crypto to have a real, material future and also simply blame the user for everything they get wrong or don't bother to educate themselves on.

If it's harder and riskier then the user isn't going to care if it's their fault or not.

Do you want a world where crypto is common and useful, or do you want it where it's the web equivalent of casinos, with some sharks making money off suckers but most people not taking it seriously as a "real" or useful business?

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#164

Post by cowtools »

kahnclusions wrote: post #161
cowtools wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards wouldn't need such stringent "protection" and surveilance if they were secure and dependable in the first place. Of course cryptocurrencies do not have such regulations. the purpose of cryptocurrency is to facilitate exchange with untrusted parties.

The point is that cryptocurrencies are not secure nor dependable in the way that people actually need them to be, and they don’t solve any of the actual problems that people have with the banking and credit system.

Cryptocurrencies are secure and dependable in the way that I need them to be and they solve problems that I have with the banking and credit system.

I mean, really. The security of the banking/credit system is not even based on public/private key cryptography. There is no notion of a separate spend address vs a sending address. Anyone with access to your (usually open source or easily findable) information can make a transaction on your behalf. Identity theft is a massive problem which is enabled by the current state of the industry.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#165

Post by cowtools »

majormajor wrote: post #163
cowtools wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These scams, crashes, are exploits are non-issues to anyone with a reasonable degree of competence and skepticism. The solution is not to "fix" the system by removing user agency so that even an idiot can use it safely, but to educate users so that an idiot doesn't need to use cryptocurrency in the first place. This criticism of cryptocurrency would be analogous to criticizing the concept of fiat currency by pointing…

You can't both want crypto to have a real, material future and also simply blame the user for everything they get wrong or don't bother to educate themselves on. If it's harder and riskier then the user isn't going to care if it's their fault or not. Do you want a world where crypto is common and useful, or do you want it where it's the web equivalent of casinos, with some sharks making money off suckers but most peo…

>You can't both want crypto to have a real, material future and also simply blame the user for everything they get wrong or don't bother to educate themselves on.

I can and I will. People know not to give out their credit card numbers to fishy businesses or install untrustworthy software on their computer. Why does that personal responsibility suddenly disappear when we talk about cryptocurrency?

>Do you want a world where crypto is common and useful, or do you want it where it's the web equivalent of casinos, with some sharks making money off suckers but most people not taking it seriously as a "real" or useful business?

The path to the world where crypto is a common and useful tool starts with these speculators and gamblers losing all their monopoly money and leaving. It's no surprise to me that the "scams" and "exploits" mentioned in the article are enabled by bloated "smart contract" cryptocurrencies like etherium that serve little real purpose.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#166

Post by worksonmine »

a4isms wrote: post #107
api wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guess is people don't pay attention or think about it. This is a well known fact in secure system design. Most people just click through dialogs. If you must get their attention you have to make the dialog huge and scary but then people will usually just turn back instead of reading. Scary dialogs make it seem like you should never say OK.

And not just secure system design. “Undo” is powerful in any app, not just because it can roll a change back with a single click, but because scary dialog boxes (“Really, really REALLY delete this file? It can not be recovered once deleted, so check this box saying you know what you’re doing before clicking OK”) don’t work for regular apps, either.

How would you undo a crypto transfer, and is that a feature that fits in that system?

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#167

Post by SilasX »

Gigachad wrote: post #148
cowtools wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto space isn't rediscovering anything. Speculative investors and other noobs are discovering cryptocurrency for the first time.

All of these scams, crashes, and exploits are things that happens previously with regular currencies and have since been regulated away. Now crypto comes in with unregulated currency and runs in to every issue the regulations existed to prevent.

Scams … have been regulated away?

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#168

Post by captn3m0 »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #156
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you'd actually read up on cryptocurrency wallets before commenting, you might have found there are multiple solutions for this out already, including one of the most popular Ethereum wallets called Argent, which let's you set limits. You're making a great example of the victim-blaming I mentioned in my comment: That anyone who is surprised by their money disappearing clearly just didn't do all of the right resea…

You ignored the part about how people are scammed using credit cards, cash, wires, etc. The problem isn't crypto - it's dishonest people developing scams to trick others into sending money. I'd bet that far more money is lost in scams using methods that don't depend on cryptocurrency rather than the ones that do. Just like with those other scams, education is a very important part of prevention.

With other scams, it’s supremely hard for scammers to cash out without a clear identity trace to follow. As a simple example, the huge explosion in ransomware is directly linked to the rise in cryptocurrency, because prior to that getting paid for ransomware was much tougher.

With Crypto, payments are irreversible, all transactions are transfers, all payees are equal (no merchants for payments and P2P for transfers) and it all combines together to be the perfect scammer heaven - you can scam people without any repercussions anonymously.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#169

Post by julianlam »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #46

Absolutely baffling that the crypto community normalized this process of connecting your wallet to a random website and letting it access all of your money. I see a lot of victim-blaming suggestions that it's the fault of the person who didn't set up a new crypto wallet for every interaction they might want to make and then transfer enough money into said wallet to cover unpredictable gas fees (while also paying gas…

> unpredictable gas fees

The fact that gas fees even exist just boggles the mind.

Bank fees at least on paper pay for overhead of running the wire transfer system. Gas fees (to my uninitiated understanding) literally just pay for the excess waste that is Ethereum, by design.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#170

Post by Phlarp »

patch_cable wrote: post #96
AgentME wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that explanation was just a little too jargony. If you have the Metamask browser extension (or another compatible web3 extension) and press its browser button to enable it while on a webpage, then the webpage can see your wallet address and suggest transactions for you to make. When that happens, the browser extension then shows a window under its own control explaining the transaction and allows you to choos…

The UX is similar to buying something with Apple Pay from a website in my experience.

Apple Pay doesn't run as a browser extension with a nasty habit of granting bad actors full access to drain your funds in a totally irreversible way.

Does any of that fall under "user experience" for you?

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