There is one interesting practice. For example, your friend asks you to borrow some crypto. You agree but you know very well how scams work and what deepfakes are. Before sending crypto, you want to make sure that your friend is who they say they are and that the request is actually from them. You decide to make a call, let's say, by FaceTime to confirm the identity of your friend. In many cases, this approach works well, but besides that, there are a lot of other effective practices to avoid being fooled.

Let's dissect these best practices in the AI-powered attacks context. They may seem funny, but they really work.

Key Takeaways

• AI-powered scams are on the rise. Scammers with access to deepfake tools, AI chatbots, and phishing-as-a-service platforms extract an average of $3.2 million per operation, compared to $719,000 for those running scams without AI.

• To protect your wallet, you should rely not only on security technologies but also on the human factor, because personal contact with your relatives and friends could be more effective than cryptography.

7 Best Practices for Securing Crypto Wallets

1. Do Not Trust Voice or Video Alone

Modern technology can copy a person’s voice and appearance very convincingly. Because of this, even a video call or a familiar voice in a messenger is not reliable proof of identity. If someone asks you to make a transfer during a call or in a chat, pause the conversation and confirm the request through another channel — for example, call the person back using a phone number you already have or contact them through a different app.

2. Be Careful with Urgency and Pressure

This is one of the most common signs of fraud is artificial urgency. Scammers may say the transfer must be done immediately, otherwise a deal will fail, an account will be locked, or some other serious problem will happen. This pressure is designed to stop you from checking the information carefully.

The one rule that resists even sophisticated AI social engineering: never enter your seed phrase in response to any message, form, or voice call, regardless of how legitimate the request appears. No real wallet or exchange support workflow will ever require this.

Coin Wallet enforces BIP39 passphrase encryption on wallet creation, adding a layer of protection to the mnemonic itself. Because Coin Wallet is self-custodial with no registration requirement, there is no account recovery flow that an attacker can impersonate to request your seed.

3. Use independent identity checks

AI makes these attacks more convincing at every step. Scripts are grammatically perfect and contextually aware. Voice cloning can reproduce a known voice from public audio. Video calls can now use real-time deepfake overlays. If something feels suspicious, ask the person to do an unexpected action in real time.

For example, ask them to show something around them, say a pre-agreed phrase, or answer a personal question. This method is not perfect, but it makes deepfake attacks more difficult.

4. Create a Code Phrase

For family or team financial operations, it can be helpful to agree on a secret code phrase for emergency situations. Even if scammers copy someone’s voice, they probably will not know this phrase.

Adopt one rule unconditionally: you initiate contact. Any inbound communication about your wallet or account is treated as potentially adversarial until you have verified it by calling back through an official number you sourced independently. Establish an anti-scam code phrase with family members that must be spoken before acting on any urgent financial request, including apparent voice or video calls from people you know.

5. Verify the Transfer Request Itself

Even if you believe the person is real, you should still check the transfer request. Ask simple questions: who started the request, why this specific wallet address is used, and why the transaction must be done immediately. Unclear or evasive answers are a strong warning sign.

6. Double-Check the Crypto Wallet Address

Always verify the wallet address before sending funds. It is safer to use saved addresses (a whitelist), confirm the last characters of the address through another communication channel, and make a small test transaction before sending large amounts.

Reject all unsolicited tools categorically. Airdrop helpers, transaction boosters, security scanners, and gas optimizers that appear in messages, social media comments, or search results are vectors for malware or phishing. No legitimate protocol requires a third-party utility to function.

7. Isolation and Environment Hygiene

Navigate to exchanges and wallets only through saved bookmarks, never through links in messages, emails, or search results. Domain spoofing is one of the highest-volume phishing techniques, and AI-generated ad copy makes fraudulent search results look indistinguishable from the real thing.

For example, Coin Wallet collects no user data, requires no registration, and includes no built-in trackers. The self-custodial architecture means there is no server-side account to phish. Even if scammers create a spoofed Coin Wallet login page, there is nothing to harvest because authentication happens locally on your device.

Frequently Asked Questions

What measures are recommended for defending against AI-powered attacks?

Use a hardware wallet to verify transactions on a trusted screen, replace SMS 2FA with passkeys or a FIDO security key, and keep a dedicated browser profile for crypto only. Treat all inbound contact about your funds as suspicious — always verify by reaching out through official channels yourself.

How to protect your digital wallet from hackers?

Use a self-custodial wallet with client-side encryption so no server holds your keys. Never enter your seed phrase online, back it up across separate physical locations, and lock your exchange account with a hardware security key and a withdrawal address allowlist.

What is the best way to defend against AI-powered phishing attacks?

Never click links in messages — navigate only via saved bookmarks. If someone contacts you claiming to be support, hang up and call back through the official website number. Set a family code phrase to verify urgent financial requests, since AI can now clone voices and video in real time.

What is the recommended practice for wallet security?

Layer your defenses: hardware wallet for signing, strong authentication (passkeys or FIDO key) for exchange accounts, a dedicated browser for crypto activity, and cold storage for anything you aren’t actively using. Test your seed phrase backup regularly — an untested backup is no backup at all.