Immediate steps

Something looks wrong. Start here.

Protective steps first, official reporting channels second. No purchase is involved on this page and nothing below requires contacting Honeycomb.

Do these now, in this order
  1. Stop communicating and stop paying

    End the call, close the chat, reply to nothing further. Send no additional money, gift cards, crypto or account details — including to anyone offering to recover what was already lost. Recovery offers that follow a scam are almost always the same operation returning.

  2. Secure the email account first

    From a device you trust, change the email password before anything else. Email is the reset path for everything else, so it is the account that decides how far this spreads. Use a new password that is not a variation of the old one.

  3. Turn on two-factor authentication

    Use an authenticator application or a passkey rather than text messages where the option exists, because phone numbers can be taken over. Then review the account's active sessions and connected devices and sign out anything unfamiliar.

  4. Work outward to the accounts that hold value

    Bank, card, exchange and payment accounts next, then anything reusing the compromised password. Contact the bank or exchange through a number or address you look up independently — never a link or number supplied by whoever made contact.

  5. If a crypto wallet or seed phrase was exposed

    Treat that wallet as permanently compromised. A seed phrase cannot be changed, so anything remaining must be moved to a newly created wallet whose phrase has never been typed into a website, shared, photographed or stored in cloud notes. Assume automated draining is already underway.

  6. Write down what happened while it is fresh

    Dates, amounts, addresses, usernames, phone numbers and screenshots. Reports are far more useful with specifics, and memory degrades quickly.


Official reporting

Where to report it in the United States.

These are government channels. Reporting does not guarantee recovery, and none of them charge a fee.

Also report it to the platform involved — the bank, card issuer or exchange — using contact details you look up yourself. Speed matters most with bank and card transactions, where some reversals remain possible. Crypto transactions are generally final once confirmed.


What Honeycomb does not do

Honeycomb does not provide emergency incident response, account recovery, custody, digital forensics, law-enforcement action or fund recovery of any kind and does not guarantee that lost money or crypto can be retrieved. Anyone who promises recovery for an upfront fee should be treated as a second scam.

Honeycomb's work here is educational: understanding how the exposure happened and closing the gaps so it does not happen again. That is useful after the immediate steps above, not instead of them.


Once things are stable

Closing the gap it came through.

When the accounts are secured and the reports are filed, the useful question is which habit or setting allowed it — and that one is answerable.

Free consultationFifteen minutes on what happened and what to change. No cost. Family Tech ReadinessWork through accounts, devices and scam patterns as a household. Wallet SimulatorFree. Rehearse the checks that catch this earlier next time.