Some people mentioned verifying just the first and last few characters of an address. We wouldn't do that personally as it still leaves you vulnerable to clipboard hijackers. These things have become pretty smart and can even paste addresses that look similar to yours. See the following video to understand how it happens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty-_IjavYH4Verifying anything less than the full address exposes you to risk. How much risk? You can estimate this by how much it would cost an attacker to generate a similar looking address. For example, if you only verified the first and last 3 characters, it would costs an attacker 0.0097 BTC (per
https://bitcoinvanitygen.com/) to generate a similar looking address. (Note: Just enter 6 random characters into the website. The order doesn't matter since the computational cost is the same whether it is the first and last 3 or the first 6 characters). If your transaction is worth anymore than that value, then it would make sense to verify more characters.
Thus, rather than having to evaluate each time how much risk you are taking on, we think it is simpler to just verify the entire address. Once from left to right, and then a second time from right to left (just to be doubly sure). Transactions on the blockchain are irreversible so we certainly won't risk it.
Another point to consider: Do you really process so many transactions in a given day that it would take up significant amounts of time to verify entire addresses? Looking at Bitcoin adoption around the world, we suspect most people have problems even finding places to spend their Bitcoins.
We have also written an article of precautions to take when
sending and receiving cryptocurrencies. Hope it helps.
Stay safe.
