- How often
- Every session, and every time a message arrives.
- How long
- A few seconds.
- What it prevents
- The requests that no legitimate process ever makes, most of which are wrapped in something reasonable.
- If you skip it
- You respond to the framing rather than the ask, which is exactly what the framing is for.
- How you notice you stopped
- You find you have already started typing before deciding to.
Requests that are never legitimate
| The request | How it is framed |
|---|---|
| A wallet phrase or private key | Migration, verification, recovery, proving the wallet is yours |
| A password on a page you did not navigate to | Session expired, confirm your identity, security check |
| A second factor code passed to a person | Support needs it to unlock the account |
| Payment outside the platform arrangement | Faster, cheaper, escrow is having problems |
| Lowering your browser security | The page will not work otherwise |
The absolute oneNothing legitimate here ever asks for a wallet phrase, in any framing, for any reason. There is no exception and nothing to weigh up.
The trick that makes this quick
Read the last sentence of a message first. If there is an ask, everything before it is framing, and framing is what you are meant to respond to. Praise, apology, urgency and explanation are all wrappers, and the wrapper is usually longer than the request it carries.
Why urgency is always attached
Because checking defeats nearly everything described on this site, and the only reliable way to prevent checking is to make somebody feel there is no time. So a deadline, a warning or a consequence for delay appears in almost every attempt. That gives a rule needing no expertise: nothing genuine here requires action within a stated period, so a clock is the answer rather than a schedule.