Dust payments to my wallet what is he trying to do?

[hkoppp]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

[jackg]

It's mostly used for tracking purposes. You can obviously do a bit of coin control (if you own your keys) and stop those outputs being spent with the rest (clients like electrum also let you freeze those received coins so you can send them separately).

There's a chance it could also be used to advertise something by getting you to search for the address but I don't think that's been the main purpose of this sort of attack before.

[cryptoaddictchie]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

If you thought that he is tracking you or watching you, why not use a new wallet and transfer your fund to a new one. This kind of technique dusting is usually used for monitoring of potential victim. Yes this is possibly trying to hack you or follow your assets on your wallet.

[hkoppp]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

If you thought that he is tracking you or watching you, why not use a new wallet and transfer your fund to a new one. This kind of technique dusting is usually used for monitoring of potential victim. Yes this is possibly trying to hack you or follow your assets on your wallet.

the problem is how did he know my wallet in the first place?
it seems like if i send my coins to another wallet i would also just get few cents sent over to there aswell.

[DaveF]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

If you thought that he is tracking you or watching you, why not use a new wallet and transfer your fund to a new one. This kind of technique dusting is usually used for monitoring of potential victim. Yes this is possibly trying to hack you or follow your assets on your wallet.

the problem is how did he know my wallet in the first place?
it seems like if i send my coins to another wallet i would also just get few cents sent over to there aswell.

It's trivial to get a list of all BTC addresses with funds in them or addresses with greater then 'x' amount in them.
After that some people send dust to those addresses so if you move it all at once they can see where it goes.
Other times they hope you look at the transaction to see a message.
Take this one:

https://mempool.space/tx/5bc44f106ae6bb52b87cdb61d8982fdf9076a29e952a49d4c86217483aba21c2
dust to 389 addresses but the beginning transactions have a web site. letsfullofsea . topic
No idea what is there and not going to check, but I bet some of those 380+ people did.

-Dave

[Charles-Tim]

I do not know the wallet you are using, but if not Electrum, you will have to import your seed phrase on Electrum so you will be able to freeze the coin (only Electrum on computer have coin control feature, mobile Electrum does not yet have it).

Download Electrum from https://electrum.org and use this guide for signature verification.

Import the seed phrase on Electrum. Open Electrum -> Click  next -> standard wallet -> I already have a seed and input your seed phrase. If it is BIP39 seed phrase, click on 'option' and check BIP39 and clcik 'next' to select your derivational path.

Code:

legacy (p2pkh) for addresses that start from 1
p2sh-segwit (p2wpkh-p2sh) for addresses that start from 3
native segwit (P2WPKH) for addresses that start from bc1

After importing your seed phrase, click on view -> show coins -> click on coin tab -> then right click and click on 'freeze coin' to freeze the coins. You can freeze as many as possible inputs that you want to freeze.

the problem is how did he know my wallet in the first place?
it seems like if i send my coins to another wallet i would also just get few cents sent over to there aswell.

The blockchain is an open ledger, the person can start after noticing your transaction on blockchain and trying to connect addresses linked to your addresses together. But the coin is dust and worthless, you can just freeze the coin easily on electrum.

[bL4nkcode]

the problem is how did he know my wallet in the first place?
it seems like if i send my coins to another wallet i would also just get few cents sent over to there aswell.

Probably the sender/attacker does not know who you are, transactions including wallet address can be seen on public e.g. blockchain explorers, if you're using an exchange or known custodial wallets, there are some tools such walletexplorer that has a list of all address on this known wallets/services not unless you're using non-custodial wallet such electrum.

[lumierre]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

It is a common thing that you recieve different strange coins. There are scammers that send you tokens and it is better just to ignore them and not to try doing anything with them as it can affect safety of your other coins. This way, I have about 20 different tokens on my Metamask that I am not aware of at all. It is showed that there is a high balance, but the value is 0 and I know that it is made just to fraud me.

[SFR10]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

IIRC, we had a lot of "spam attacks ^{[network overload/stress tests (due to various reasons) that led to higher transactions fees]}" in 2017-2018... If you're still receiving such amounts in 2021, then you're probably dealing with what you and other users have been talking about ^{[dusting attacks for tracking purposes]}.

[mk4]

It is a common thing that you recieve different strange coins. There are scammers that send you tokens and it is better just to ignore them and not to try doing anything with them as it can affect safety of your other coins. This way, I have about 20 different tokens on my Metamask that I am not aware of at all. It is showed that there is a high balance, but the value is 0 and I know that it is made just to fraud me.

Probably not. While OP didn't mention a specific coin, we can assume that OP is talking about BTC as this is the Bitcoin Discussion section. Also, those altcoin scams that send tokens to your wallet to hopefully trigger a contract aren't using dust amounts, they usually send in a good amount of tokens(hundreds/thousands/millions) as to make it more tempting for the user to try to sell the tokens.

[dothebeats]

There's a chance it could also be used to advertise something by getting you to search for the address but I don't think that's been the main purpose of this sort of attack before.

Some of the dust spams back in 2016 - 2018 included some strange websites when you searched it up on the blockchain. I have received some of those dust payments for quite some time until it just stopped suddenly. Fortunately, I'm just keeping that address for vanity purposes and not storage nor spending anymore since I learned the importance of using change address.

To OP, freeze coin suggestion on dust inputs is actually a good thing to prevent your wallet client to group all the coins found within the address, and in order for you to still take out your funds out of it should you decide to leave the address for good.

[noorman0]

it seems like if i send my coins to another wallet i would also just get few cents sent over to there aswell.

Just explore the destination addresses that you have sent bitcoin with your address, do they also get dust payments? If not, then you will be safe with the new address (I don't recommend moving it all at once).

Another alternative to masking the tracks, use a bitcoin mixing service like coinjoin. Or if you use CEX, take advantage of it.

[DarkDays]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

Not the first time you see these things. It is probably a way to get you to interact with them. To be safe, never do and most of all don't spend whatever got accumulated. To be free of hassle you might want to consider moving funds to a new wallet or ignore it if you can but this maybe difficult to do since you feel like your wallet is being watched. Up to you but it is critical you don't interact and safest to move funds.

Thanks for posting, I'm sure it will make a lot of new people on here aware of this dusting attack.

[wajik-tempe]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

Not really sure but i assume he is sending it randomly to many wallets in purpose of tracking them, once they found a wallet that deposited with big amount of coins, they will target your wallet to be hacked but i still don't know how they do it but just be careful because hackers are really smart and getting smarter each day.
So i think it's better to move the rest of your balance to a brand new wallet.

[carlfebz2]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

Not really sure but i assume he is sending it randomly to many wallets in purpose of tracking them, once they found a wallet that deposited with big amount of coins, they will target your wallet to be hacked but i still don't know how they do it but just be careful because hackers are really smart and getting smarter each day.
So i think it's better to move the rest of your balance to a brand new wallet.

You cant really be hacked if you dont exposed your keys, no matter how many people would be sending out those cents on your wallet then theres no way

that they could bypass out a certain  wallet specially if its a non-custodial one and as long those keys arent known and i had the same similar experience

too on where i do see some micro amounts being sent to my wallet address but i dont really give a damn care about those and just totally ignore.
Just dont make any unnecessary steps though.

[Fortify]

1 of my wallets storaging some coins for years back in 2018

somebody has constantly been sending 0.33 cents to me what is he trying to do?
can somebody explain if i were to move coins out will those cents he sent me affect anything or is this all tracking purposes by someone

Just take them and be happy is all you really need to know about it. There could be all sorts of different causes behind it and there's no point even trying to figure it out or spending any time thinking over it. Nobody is tracking anything useful by sending you this cash. You can use a new wallet in future and conduct all your transactions through there if you think this is some sort of problem. How often does this happen, once a day or once every few months? It'd turn into a nice little revenue stream over time if you were getting this amount daily in Bitcoin which has steadily been trending up over the years. Someone sending you free money is really no bother at all.

[hatshepsut93]

Someone is hoping that you will again use this address that received dust, for example if you don't practice coin control and make a payment from the same wallet and it will automatically use this dust as an input. I also received dust to the addresses that I mentioned on this forum or that are publicly visible, like a signature campaign address.

My guess is that this is done by chainanalysis companies who build a large collection of wallets and identities. Stay safe.

[khaled0111]

Dust attacks are performed mainly either for advertising or de-anonymization purposes. What's for sure, is that it can not effect the safety of your coins, at least not in a direct way.

If you care about your privacy then just ignore those coins and freeze them as suggested above. Consolidating them is not even worth the transaction fee, anyway.

[AhmadM]

Not really sure but i assume he is sending it randomly to many wallets in purpose of tracking them, once they found a wallet that deposited with big amount of coins, they will target your wallet to be hacked but i still don't know how they do it but just be careful because hackers are really smart and getting smarter each day.

Highly likely it was for tracking purposes, meanwhile there's a chance it's just a troll by someone in order to send a particular message.
Afaik you couldn't be hacked directly by that way, the one that sent those dust amounts would try to look for every single important real-life information related to the address then use them to threaten people.

So i think it's better to move the rest of your balance to a brand new wallet.

I don't think it would solve the problem, just ignore it and leave them as it is if there is no significant amount in the address that received dust amounts.

[Oasisman]

Dust attacks are performed mainly either for advertising or de-anonymization purposes. What's for sure, is that it can not effect the safety of your coins, at least not in a direct way.

If you care about your privacy then just ignore those coins and freeze them as suggested above. Consolidating them is not even worth the transaction fee, anyway.

That's the very least someone can do when experiencing a dust attack. Freezing them surely is the most safest one not to be able to do anything about those stupid coins.

I'm not sure If it's somehow this old method of attack is as effective as before. Doing this trick, I guess most people are well aware of it and most of the time might not fall for it.