Crypto wallet safety and scam watch
Updated
Pause Before Send tracks the scams aimed at people who hold crypto, and the people scammers push toward it. Every claim links to its source, every page shows a date, and scam alerts carry no affiliate links.
Active right now
Fake "Ledger firmware update" pages
A copied Genuine Check screen built to steal your 24 words. Flagged Oct 16, 2026.
Address poisoning
$415,136 lost to lookalike addresses in four cases, Sep 25–Oct 7, 2026. Plus a 60-second pre-send check.
Crypto ATM scams in Kansas & Missouri
FBI 2025 data: 434 complaints and $11.4M lost across the two states. Plus how the new Kansas refund law works.
Start here
- Blog: one scam or safety question per post, answered first
- Hardware wallet safety guide: buying, setup, updates, sending
- Scam tracker: dated log with confidence ratings, downloadable as CSV
- Data: FBI IC3 2025 crypto and crypto-ATM scam figures by state, as tables, CSV and JSON (CC BY 4.0)
- Glossary: 20 terms in plain English
- Weekly newsletter
From the blog
- Address poisoning: how lookalike addresses steal crypto, and the 60-second fix
- Wallet drainers and token approvals: what you signed, and how to revoke it
- Pig-butchering scams: the warning signs, stage by stage
- Fake crypto support: how impersonators reach you, and the one rule that stops them
- Seed phrase phishing: why no real site ever asks for your recovery phrase
- Crypto recovery scams: why "we can get your money back" is usually the second scam
- Airdrop and "claim" scams: why the free tokens in your wallet are bait
- Hardware wallet setup: a safe, step-by-step checklist