Intro

Members of The Furious Chickens were targeted by hackers. Thousands of dollars worth of cards were stolen, not just from the Furious Chickens, but also from other guilds. I have heard of a number of confirmed attacks, and it looks like there isn't much we can do about it at this point.

...but there may be a solution hiding in plain sight.

Problem

Here's what happened. I had a Llama delegated to me to help me climb the ranks. One day it was gone, so I messaged the member who had delegated it to me who said they didn't take any action.

The next day, after much weeping and gnashing of teeth (I imagine they needed to collect themselves) I got the message nobody in the NFT/Crypto community wants to hear, "I got hacked." A fellow fowl had lost some VERY expensive cards. Those cards were sold for lower than market value within the account, and the funds transferred to another wallet.

Solution

After looking into this a little bit, I discovered that Splinterlands players can lock their cards for 1-30 days. A great solution to this problem!

Thanks @splinterlands for making this information readily available! You can access the announcement from May 2021 here: @splinterlands/card-locking-feature-and-dec-updates

In this example, I want to lock my three Lava Launchers, so I navigate to that page in my collection, hover the mouse of the lock on the right hand side of the screen and "Lock Cards" appears in a pop-up.

When you click the lock, the screen below appears telling you exactly what locking your cards does. While locked...

• You cannot burn, transfer, or sell your cards
• You CAN rent cards out
• You CAN use locked cards in battles
• You CAN delegate locked cards out

This is Splinterlands built in protection in the case that your account is hacked. If you are worried you might be targeted by hackers, follow the steps in this guide and protect your account by locking your cards! When your cards are locked, you will see a lit up lock in the "Status" column of your card as shown in the picture below featuring my Lava Launchers.

Conclusion

If you are scared about your cards getting stolen, locking your cards is a great solution as long as you don't need to sell them soon. Remember, cards can be locked for 1-30 days; think carefully about the cards you want locked and the length of time you want them locked. It's a good idea to make sure you don't lock any cards you are looking to flip for a quick profit.

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