Crypto wallet address poisoning is a new scam that deceives a user into transferring funds to another wallet instead of an intended recipient.
Users should be familiar with a crypto wallet’s transaction list, which contains all their sent and received transfers.
This list provides details on the token type and the amount transferred, with a short form of the addresses involved in the transaction.
It’s these information that scammers uses to poison crypto wallet’s transaction history, with addresses that resembles.
However, these tiny dots can hide different digits from the original ones, and users end-up sending funds to the wrong addresses.
How address poisoning scam works
Address poisoning may not be the most aggressive cryptocurrency scam, but it still tricks many into funding crypto fraudsters.
These fraudsters target long hexadecimal addresses when monitoring blockchain explorer for new transactions.
Next, they select a target and use a vanity address generator to create addresses similar to those used by the wallet owners.
Generally, the address repeats the first and last characters, while keeping the middle ones close to the original replica.
Fortunately, it’s easy to detect, and we will show you how to avoid it – even if you’re not a tech-savvy crypto user.
How to avoid address poisoning scams
You can avoid becoming a victim of the wallet address scam just as easy as the fraudsters use it against you.
You should always check and recognize every character in the wallet address you wish to fund.
Moreover, you should check incoming and unexpected transfers from addresses that look similar to those in your wallet history.
Upon discovering these transactions, revisit the transaction lists and identify the poisoned addresses.
Lastly, users should remember that transactions on the blockchain are irreversible, which means, sending funds to an incorrect address will result in a loss.
Therefore, you have to double-check addresses in their entirety before transferring crypto investments to any of them.
Final thoughts
If you must know, hardware wallets are the most popular providers of crypto asset storage solutions.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that scammers target their users frequently, as was the case with phishing scam.
However, Ledger wallets are among the best kinds of cryptocurrency wallet that provide its users with maximum security.
If you would like me to suggest wallets, I recommend either Ledger Stax and Ledger Nano X for your invest funds storage.
Nevertheless, the wallet company is always quick to alert its users of new threats and how to avoid them.
