Have you ever been dusted!! Don't panic

[Dorkylickjj]

I have received dust many times in the last years, mainly in addresses with positive balance (I don't check the empty ones often, so I don't know whether I receive something there). As far as I'm aware, that's not a big issue since there is no need to send dust in order to track the transactions from or to that address since the blockchain is public.

IMO, the moral should be keep things tidy, the same if you received dust or not. Although a single point of failure is enough to break your privacy, the more mistakes you make the more chances of being tracked and, eventually, attacked. So it is a good idea to create throw-away addresses while being aware that every time you consolidate you may be sharing too much info.

I don't know how scammers manage to know which wallet has some funds in it to target, from what I heard they send lots of micro transactions to multiple addresses, but how do they get this addresses, are they guessed or is they a way they find them.

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[Zanab247]

Thanks for sharing your experience in this forum, so that newbies and other members will not fall victim to those scammers because it use to pain when scammers succeeded to hack someone wallet to withdraw coins without the person permission.

 Now that you have exposed them in this new strategy they are using to scam newbies, I guess they will try another tactics but they will be expose again because many people that experienced such thing has shared their experience, that make many people to learn so that they will be free from such scammers in the community.

 I know that many people will not be panic, if they see something like this in the future, and what will come to their mind, this is a scammer because they have seen something like that from this trend that impact them.

[Zigabel]

Lol its funny how scammers are very innovative these days, who have heard about dusting, where a scammers sends tiny bits of crypto to different wallet address. Guess what I just received the smallest sol ever, three times in a role. In case your having same experience don't panic your wallet isn't hacked or anything its just a scammer trying to get to know you. If you feel unsafe about this I'll just explain what they try to achieve by this and how you can be safe.

👉dusting attacks happen when small very negligible amont of crypto is sent to multiple addresses on a network. In case it happens to you dont panic its not such a big deal but you must understand why they do this in other not to further fall a victim cause its a means to an end and they usually use crypto with very low fees like sol, I've experienced it mostly on sol about four times now.

From my research I've found out that this is why they dust
👉to find out who own the wallet don't know how they do this tho
👉to track your transaction: this is possible since transaction are recorded on a ledger and they just need to track the dusted funds as its been moved with other funds


👉to find out active wallets

How to be safe
👉 something this dusted fund can come with a link in their description. So you would be a fool to click, your 3 feet from falling into their trap.
👉adopt usage of wallet that prioritize privacy and try not to spend that dusted fund, since they are majorly trying to get information through tracking your transaction and don't bother moving funds to a new wallet they can still track that except new wallet has more privacy.

This is just one way that scammers use to compromise privacy But it's not such a big deal if you know wat it is and know not to panic or fall for any Link trick they mostly add to the transaction description.

Stay safe.

This has been actually helpful as i know only a lot about dust buy this have actually broadened my view about dust and i think i can now know how best to hand it if it happens buy rhen is there a way to avoid been dusted in the first place so we don't have to start having to fight it when it has already started in our wallet already, i think going by that which you have explained you can possibly abandon the wallet and use a different wallet for your future transactions so you don't have to battle all of such issues again.

[Kelward]

All you have to do is send the dust to the Genesis block address, something like 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa which will never move their coins or have outgoing transactions, so the attackers can have run watching a rock just sitting there.

Sure, it will cost a few sats in fees if you want the thing to be actually confirmed, but it's worth getting rid of such parasites from your wallet.

I think that sending the dust token to a genesis block should be the safest thing to do in such a scenerio when a scammer sends you the token to scam you, so that he'll meet a dead end there. Ofcourse the price for this is the transaction fees, especially as it's high now, but it's a high price to pay if you want to completely move on from the scammer's reader.

[Z390]

I have received dust many times in the last years, mainly in addresses with positive balance (I don't check the empty ones often, so I don't know whether I receive something there). As far as I'm aware, that's not a big issue since there is no need to send dust in order to track the transactions from or to that address since the blockchain is public.

IMO, the moral should be keep things tidy, the same if you received dust or not. Although a single point of failure is enough to break your privacy, the more mistakes you make the more chances of being tracked and, eventually, attacked. So it is a good idea to create throw-away addresses while being aware that every time you consolidate you may be sharing too much info.

I don't know how scammers manage to know which wallet has some funds in it to target, from what I heard they send lots of micro transactions to multiple addresses, but how do they get this addresses, are they guessed or is they a way they find them.

Every addresses are made public once they sent out some coins or they receive some coins, for example every coins have their block explorer, even if you get a new wallet today and you send some coins from an exchange into the wallet it will be visible on Etherscan and others. ..

Once it sends or receive it become public and others can view how much tokens and coins you have in the wallet, what they can't find out is who the real owner of the wallet is, so scammers can send fake tokens or NFTs to the wallet, hoping that you take a step.

Most people got scammed this way because they got greedy, seeing free tokens in their wallet will make them misbehave, they will start finding ways to sell the free tokens or coin, and this will lead them to the wrong or malicious link where they will end up getting scammed.