Address poisoning recently cost a victim over $12 million in January

[Charles-Tim]

Scammers target active wallets that perform numerous transactions in a short period and then send dust to them, hoping the scam will succeed.

People that make numerous transaction are not only the target, I have sent coins to a wallet before several times but followed by the dust transactions. I am no more getting the notification for dust transactions and not appearing on my transaction history as the developers block the dust transaction not to appear on the transaction history.

Wallets and explorers can reduce the risk of address poisoning by using tools such as wallet activity analysis, whitelists, or dust transaction blocking.

Just dust transaction blocking is enough to let people not fall victims of it but many wallet developers did not do this. The wallet developers are the people that I blame the most.

[$crypto$]

Recently there was also an incident of address poisoning with a total loss of $354K --- this is increasingly rampant with cases like this where when there are addres that have a lot of assets then it will be targeted by fraudsters by sending fake tokens with almost the same address.
https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2021931468637741108
I still will not copy the address from the transaction history, because it could be without us realizing it is the address that is copied from the poisoning address.

[el kaka22]

If you fall for these social engineering ways of attacks and you still lose your money then you either haven't been in the crypto world for too long, or you do not know what you are dealing with.

Because in reality we have seen these happen all the time and we have even seen warnings about it all the time. Dust attacks, wrong addresses, even getting hacked in a way where it automatically copies the wrong address (still no idea how they did that) so it's clear that you have to be careful when you use something that is irreversible.

[EarnOnVictor]

How much more millions of dollars worth? I guess those guys are crazy and lazy at the same time.

I do not think they are lazy, but they do not have the important information in avoiding this scam is the reason. They are only tricked, not knowing the address belongs to scammers and not them.

Yeah, but that's correct only if they are novices in the game. Still, I used "lazy" because cases like this are not isolated. The way we hear it from individual is the way we hear it from companies, and an example is Bybit. Those monies are too big to be careless about without making them go through every possible verification.

How the hell can a man worth 50 million in dollars and still use crypto wallets where you can copy paste? Why not airgapped device where you can easily use QR code to avoid pasting wrong address or address poisoning?

That's also a very good point, as an air-gapped device using QR codes gives a better trust on the address you are sending to, though not a foolproof, if done well will eliminate almost every doubt. Even at that, my mind will still not be at rest sending such a huge amount without manually checking it.

And I tell you, I might go beyond double checking, but doing it 3 or even 4 times.

[TastyChillySauce00]

If you fall for these social engineering ways of attacks and you still lose your money then you either haven't been in the crypto world for too long, or you do not know what you are dealing with.

Because in reality we have seen these happen all the time and we have even seen warnings about it all the time. Dust attacks, wrong addresses, even getting hacked in a way where it automatically copies the wrong address (still no idea how they did that) so it's clear that you have to be careful when you use something that is irreversible.

Clipboard hacking probably rarely happen anymore because web is ramping up its security and every action requires permission such as seeing clipboard, etc.

I agree with you though, if people care to recheck the receiver address, they won't easily lose money due to address poisoning. I mean, by not reusing the address from last transaction alone they'd easily avoid address poisoning.
People are too lazy to recheck even when it involves their hard earned money.

[passwordnow]

I still will not copy the address from the transaction history, because it could be without us realizing it is the address that is copied from the poisoning address.

This is the best way to avoid being a victim of address poisoning, sound simple but others have been copying the addresses from the transaction histories which shouldn't be. Others who have been checking through transaction histories believing that they're fine with that should change that habit of checking your own wallet addresses through the transactions history or by the blockchain. Just check the wallet itself and copy the address from there.

[Dunamisx]

Many people are not paying much attention to the transactions they made, so they will prefer to copy from the address history instead of going to copy their address from the wallet itself and then make transaction, a slight mistake can cause us huge consequences, many never knew that this is happening already that scammers can use this method of address poisoning to steal what belongs to them.

[Orpichukwu]

It doesn't take so much time to copy an address from the original source anytime we want to send our coins to the address, so we should learn from the losses of these two victims. If it were when I didn't know about these type of scam, when ever i want to send some coins to an address I have sent funds to before, I normally copy the address from my wallet history but after reading about the first case of address poisoning, I stopped doing that. Prevention is better than cure.

Prevention is indeed better than cure. I have also been doing that over and over again, at least with the wallet. I practice that; I have a one-way-in wallet and a one-way-out wallet, like I have only received payment into the wallet from one source, and I usually send to one source too. But then again, even if I check through my history, I try to make sure I reconfirm the address before making the final confirmation to avoid mistakes or regrets.

[shinratensei_]

We need a perfect wallet that could provide mechanism to flag these poisoning addresses. They should compare every addresses interacted with our current wallet and flag for addresses that are similar but different with poisoning flag.
That will be a good help especially for people who aren't educated enough about how address poisoning works. If the wallet can build mechanism that prevent from sending to poisoning addresses, even elderly won't be scammed anymore.

I wonder if such wallet exist, i've been using some wallet, all of them never bothered to do this.

[noorman0]

We need a perfect wallet that could provide mechanism to flag these poisoning addresses. They should compare every addresses interacted with our current wallet and flag for addresses that are similar but different with poisoning flag.

I don't think it will be implemented to the liking of every user. You know, they'll never be satisfied.

Address whitelisting, confirmation popups, etc.; we don't really lack wallet security features. The real problem isn't the platform; misfortune doesn't always have to happen to the ignorant. Even advanced users can be impulsive sometimes.

[_act_]

It doesn't take so much time to copy an address from the original source anytime we want to send our coins to the address, so we should learn from the losses of these two victims. If it were when I didn't know about these type of scam, when ever i want to send some coins to an address I have sent funds to before, I normally copy the address from my wallet history but after reading about the first case of address poisoning, I stopped doing that. Prevention is better than cure.

Prevention is indeed better than cure. I have also been doing that over and over again, at least with the wallet. I practice that; I have a one-way-in wallet and a one-way-out wallet, like I have only received payment into the wallet from one source, and I usually send to one source too. But then again, even if I check through my history, I try to make sure I reconfirm the address before making the final confirmation to avoid mistakes or regrets.

You can go to the previous posts on page one, address poisoning was explained there, read what it is. Bitcoin_Strange had a point but you did not understand him. Address poisoning happened because the person affected copied the address from receiving address on his wallet but which are from hackers dust attack, thinking he is the owner, it is not about confirming if it is your address alone, you have to make sure that it is not a scammer address which the people attacked thought it is their own addresses. So they can still make mistake even if the address is rechecked from the wrong transaction history.

About prevention is better than cure, there is no cure for this. Any mistake made of sending the address to the scammer, the money can not be reversed

[jostorres]

I must check and double-check (if not triple-check) before I click send. That is the only solution to this menace.

Yeah I agree, I would say if you are sending money to wrong address, there is really nobody else to blame but you, that should be clear. While I get that it may not be easy and simple if you feel too lazy to check, it will definitely happen some other way and should not be considering this as a problem because you must pay for your laziness. Don't get me wrong, this will happen and for that reason, I think we should not be looking into this as something that would be big deal.

Sure it is not that great for now, but it will be great if we could just learn it eventually and making mistakes is a way to learn and be better and not make these mistakes anymore. Just being careful by double checking and having latest anti-virus and also having separate device for wallet may help for sure.