In the bustling world of digital finance, where transactions fly across the globe in the blink of an eye, Yuri stands as a silent sentinel against the dark tide of cybercrime. A seasoned anti-scam specialist at Binance, her daily life is like a thrilling real-time chess game played in the internet’s dark corners where malicious players lurk in the shadows.
This isn't a role that enjoys the spotlight, and even her colleagues are rarely privy to the details of Yuri and her team's work in their role of Binance’s live “firewall.” Summed up in a single phrase, Yuri's role involves digging into user characteristics and behavior to identify potential fraudulent activity and intervene if needed, thus safeguarding users' assets on the Binance platform.
In discussing her work, she becomes extremely animated, stating that not everyone is as lucky as her to have found a career at a young age that she not only excels in, but also passionately loves. Sometimes she feels as though she's weaved a net, ready to net the fish when the time comes. Her joy not only comes from the triumph of defeating fraudsters in each victorious battle but also from the satisfaction of preventing potential victims from taking financial losses.
Bookish Inspiration
During her childhood, she spent countless hours after school in an old library near her home where she eagerly consumed every detective novel she could find. At times she would bury her head in crime fiction until the dark.
Back then, she dreamed about becoming a detective or policewoman like the characters in her favorite novel. However, she was limited by her eyesight condition and fear of blood and wasn’t fit for active line service in law enforcement. During her subsequent education and career development, she had discovered that some risk management roles could be summed up as a "cyber detective." Such a role, she realized, would allow her to toggle between the virtual and real worlds, fighting against fraudsters and scammers.
During her high school, Yuri displayed an interest in mathematics and physics. She adored formal logic and loved to analyze and dissect problems. The biggest concern of her parents was that she would often delve into problem-solving late into the night. What drove her was not just the pursuit of a single correct answer, but also the exploration of a variety of simpler solutions.
In college, she studied Electronic Engineering. When she wanted an electric skateboard, she got the necessary components from the market and soldered the circuit board by herself. The feeling of cruising through the wind on a hill by the school brought her a sense of exhilarating happiness.
Career Exploration
Yuri’s “can-do” spirit is alive and well into her early 30s. At the beginning of her career, she was the third employee of the Asian branch of a Silicon Valley anti-scam company. Starting from scratch, her responsibilities included not only building an anti-fraud system, but also furnishing the office with tables and chairs.
At a company investor’s request, Yuri and her team began to research various financial fraud scenarios. She approached the task creatively. When she wanted to comprehend how a disordered loan control system operated, she would check loan advertisements on roadside billboards and online. She joined fraudulent loan providers’ communities disguised as a student in need of a loan. Through chats that gained trust, she would proceed to the end of the process. This allowed her to understand the lifecycle of fraudulent behaviors, helping her to develop a better anti-scam system.
After fighting fraudsters in the Web2 and fiat world for several years, a friend referred her to an opportunity with Binance that promised a chance to join a great battle for user funds safety in the crypto space.
At Binance, the risk team's goal is simple: to prevent or at least limit user asset loss as quickly as possible to protect every user. In established industries and companies she used to work in, there was an unspoken rule to "not reduce asset loss too fast" to protect the team's long-term OKR. Binance was different which was aligned with Yuri's fundamental values.
Entering a new industry and operating a new system, she was enthusiastic and ready to roll up her sleeves, diving eagerly into the tasks at hand.
Protecting Users
Scams are no more common in crypto than in traditional finance, but they can introduce both additional difficulties and opportunities for crime fighters. Transactions are transparent on the blockchain but irreversible, and scams can easily span multiple jurisdictions at once. There is also an underlying philosophical debate: for a centralized platform in a cryptocurrency industry built on principles of decentralization, where are the boundaries of permissible protective intervention?
Yuri gave an example: as a platform, Binance does not have the right to freeze a legitimate user's account, and can only advise and alert the victim if they insist on transferring money to the scammer outside of Binance. This forces Yuri and her colleagues to learn about user psychology and constantly hone their communication skills to gain users‘ trust in assessment from the risk system and help reduce the probability of financial loss when a risk is identified.
In recent years, Binance has invested significant resources in compliance and risk controls and has been consistently building its anti-scam capabilities, both in terms of platform security and user education. This also includes cooperating with law enforcement agencies around the world against fraud and community education activities such as the Ninja Project.
Outside of work, Yuri has been a content creator for several years, publishing educational anti-scam articles to help users navigate the world of digital finance more safely.
Poetry Mom
Over the years, she has anonymously written nearly a hundred articles on the different platforms. Not only did she share anti-scam educational articles, but also poetry.
There is a rare touch of sentimentality for someone who typically relies on logic and rationality. Poetry has been her emotional outlet since her childhood, recording many moments such as her vulnerability during pregnancy, nostalgia of her hometown, love for cats, and secrets shared with her daughter.
Yuri currently lives in Bahrain with her four-year-old daughter. She says that becoming a mother has allowed her to more deeply understand and empathize with others, enabling her to see the lives of victims behind each scam and always wanting to help them.
She shares that work can be challenging, but feels that she is constantly being healed by her passion for what she does and her loving child. One day, when she was feeling especially tired, she joked that she would like to be a rock in her next life. A few weeks later, her daughter ran up to her and said that in her next life, she no longer wanted to be human. Yuri didn't immediately understand, then her daughter said, "I'll just be a little flower, accompanying you, the rock."
