full image - Repost: january 2026: one guy lost $284m to “hardware wallet support” phishing. what are we doing wrong? (from Reddit.com, january 2026: one guy lost $284m to “hardware wallet support” phishing. what are we doing wrong?)
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in january 2026, one person lost around $282–284m in btc and ltc in what might be one of the largest individual crypto thefts ever. no protocol exploit, no exchange hack, no hardware bug. just social engineering.the victim kept serious funds on a hardware wallet, holding about 1,459 btc and 2.05m ltc. scammers reached out pretending to be official hardware wallet support, claimed the account or device was at risk, and pushed for “urgent” action. at some point, the victim either entered their seed phrase on a fake page or approved malicious transactions they didn’t fully understand. once the attackers had control, they swept everything and quickly laundered it across chains and into monero and other assets.so the hardware wallet did its job. the weak link was trust and lack of critical thinking.what went wrong:trusting inbound “support” that initiated contact instead of the user reaching out through official channels.treating the seed phrase as something you might share “for verification” instead of a never‑share secret.acting under time pressure and fear instead of slowing down and independently checking what’s going on.my takeaways:hardware wallets are reliable tools, but they cannot fix human decisions.no legit support will ever ask for your seed or recovery words, in any format, under any circumstances.if “support” contacts you first, hang up, close the chat, and go to the official site yourself before doing anything.this post is based on a real january 2026 case documented by on‑chain sleuths and security firms, but all personal details are anonymized.how do you personally handle it when “support” reaches out to you first?
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