Why You Can't Help Falling for ICO Scams

Lost in the excitement and ongoing momentum of the ICO craze is the fact that, despite the crowdfunding model's enormous potential, we're still surrounded by risks.

To date, there have been thousands of ICOs and token sales, and although many go off without a hitch or shock, there have been a shocking number of ICOs that end in investors losing their money.

Many times, hackers and fraudsters will take advantage of an upcoming ICO to scam users in a variety of ways, from phishing attacks to more insidious methods.

This is far from the only story I've seen, and ICO scams continue to harm the sector to the tune of millions of dollars.

In these cases, the problem is not finding the right ICO to invest in, but rather that even when they choose a legitimate company, they are still at risk of external hackers and others who may steal their funds.

Hackers have developed several methods to disguise their attacks by leveraging an ICO's identity, and in some cases to attack ICOs directly.

It can be hard to know how to spot scams or fraud, and even so, there are things everyone can do to be safer when searching for ICOs to participate in and to ensure that even when we invest we are still taking every precaution possible.

The most important thing is to be aware and to closely examine every part of an ICO before participating and giving money to the company.

Just as ICO scams present new types of threats to investors and companies alike, the solutions we use to combat them cannot be conventional.

I envision a world where we can use collective intelligence to protect everyone from fraud and ICO scams.