OpenSea Introduces New Fraud Prevention Mechanism

OpenSea, the world’s largest Non-Fungible Token (NFT) trading platform has made a new step to safeguard its platform users from theft through the introduction of new safety features. 

As announced by the firm, suspicious NFT transfers will, henceforth, be hidden in a newly created tab, a system that is similar in all respect to the way Spam emails work. The trading justified the creation of the system based on its record of unsolicited NFT transfers, most of which originate from malicious actors which can then be harnessed to exploit users.

While the platform maintains the fact that NFT transfers cannot necessarily be limited considering the open nature of the decentralized web, it is possible to tame their overall impact.

“One particular ecosystem-wide issue involves unexpected NFT transfers from someone you don’t know. This is similar to email: anyone can send you an email, including scammers,” the announcement reads, “We’ve seen scammers use these NFT transfers to entice a recipient to view an NFT listing that contains links to malicious third-party websites. Curious collectors will then visit and interact with those websites, which can sometimes lead to phishing and result in the theft of NFTs from the collector’s wallet.”

OpenSea and the Flexibility of the Fraud Prevention Model

OpenSea revealed that its new system of hiding unwanted NFTs is a very flexible one as users can easily adjust the settings from the ‘Hidden’ tab in the Collectors section.

There is an option for users to always hide the NFTs they do not want by themselves or to click on auto-addition so the system can do the hiding for them. The NFT trading platform said the new service will be rolled out gradually, and that users should note that the new system is still being developed and tested out, a disclaimer for any form of hitches encountered.

“Many of these changes are subtle updates to how OpenSea displays blockchain events. So if you see something unexpected (like an expected transfer that doesn’t show up in the Collected folder or the Hidden folder), please reach out to our support team for help at support.opensea.io.” the announcement noted.

OpenSea users have been the subject of immense Phishing hacks in recent times, and with the new provision, the trading platform hopes some of these mishaps will be reduced to the barest minimum.