How 2FA and hardware wallets SAVED me!

To begin with I should say that I am not that tech savvy. I learn as I go and as I need to.

I started into crypto a couple years ago and got my first trezor shortly after the BCH fork when they became available again. Before that I kept funds on exchanges and I didn’t think much about security. But it was time to get more techy so I got one. That and my value in crypto was going somewhere I had never imagined. I moved most of my BTC and LTC there. Left some on poloniex as I was acquiring more Stratis(Been building a stash for a while). Recently I got myself a ledger Nano S so I could secure my STRAT and ETH easier.

So over the last few months I’ve been collecting Stratis and transferring it to my ledger from poloniex. Last Monday I finished my collection and transferred a decent chunk of STRAT to my ledger and also a few ETC that I had on there leaving my poloniex account with maybe .00000001 BTC. I then opened an account with binance, shipped about $500 in LTC over there to buy 3 coins I’m completely gambling on. It’s all house money now anyways.

So back to not being tech savvy. In the last few months I just started using hardware wallets and 2FA(2 factor authentication). I have in on all exchanges and wallets except poloniex. I admit I was lazy and never messed with turning it on bc I’ve been on that exchange so long and I felt comfy I guess.

Early last week I noticed on my PC laptop that the google chrome extension had switched to yahoo as the main search engine. I found this odd but didn’t think much about it so I just set the default to google and went on.

In the next day or two I checked my email while at work and had a message from poloniex saying my password had been changed. I wasn’t too worried since I had removed all my funds just a day or two prior although this made me think about that yahoo switch. So when I got home I used my MacBook to try and contact poloniex and get my account back since I plan on using it In the future. I then decided to start up my Windows laptop to check binance since I did still have funds there and I hadn’t accessed that site yet from my Mac.

I pulled up binance and that’s when I really thought about the google chrome switching to yahoo and decided not to sign in with that computer. So I go back to the Mac and start the process of contacting poloniex support when about 2-3 minutes later my phone whistles and it’s binance sending me a 2FA text that I had not requested. I immediately replied to freeze my account(not sure if you can really text back or not) and went to binance to sign in incorrectly on purpose multiple times to try and lock down the account. After a couple hours I was able to change my password with binance and 24 hours after that I removed the funds I had on there.

I’m not sure if the google to yahoo thing has anything to do with it since I’m not that technical but I do know that the hardware wallets and 2FA saved me a lot of money. Had they been able to get into my binance they would have only gotten $4-500 worth of coin at today’s prices but if I had not removed my ETC and STRAT from poloniex, the account that was hacked they would have stolen a grip load of money!!

Since then I have changed all passwords includIng my email except poloniex since I’m still waiting to hear from support but I was able to freeze that account even though it was empty to begin with.

If you’re new or old to crypto PLEASE MAKE SURE TO SET UP 2FA AND GET A HARDWARE WALLET TO SECURE YOUR COINS!!!!!!!