Do Not Get Fooled by Disguised Addresses
Transaction is the most common scenario in both real life and the crypto world. According to CoinEx Wallet Explorer, there have been around 250,000 new Bitcoin transactions on a daily average. In addition, Etherscan.io revealed that the recent daily transaction volume of the Ethereum network stands at about 1 million, demonstrating the massive demand for cryptocurrency transactions.
Source: CoinEx Wallet Explorer
Source: Etherscan.io
Meanwhile, crypto transactions are targeted by malicious players. Recently, some crypto users noticed that sometimes their cryptos are not sent to the recipient, even though it was already confirmed by the blockchain. How could cryptos disappear for no reason?
Let’s try to understand what happened through the hypothetical case of Adam and Smith. Adam transferred 100 USDT to Smith, who successfully received the funds. The next day, Adam tried to transfer another 200 USDT to Smith, and, to save time, he clicked on the historical transaction to copy Smith’s address and paste it to the transaction page. However, when the transaction is completed, Smith says that the 200 USDT didn’t arrive.
As you can tell, the main problem in the above case lies in the transaction address, and some of you might wonder if the address changed. Is that really the case? Did historical addresses change within such a short period?
Smith’s address didn’t change, and what happened was a hoax conducted by the scammer, who disguised his address as one that looks just like Smith’s to exploit the complexities of crypto addresses and to catch users off guard. To be more specific, after Adam made the transaction the first day, the scammer’s program detected that Smith’s address (e.g., T******EifWk7) is similar to his own (T******KifWk7), so he decided to transfer a small amount of USDT to Adam’s address.
A typical crypto address is a ten-digit string consisting of letters and numbers, making it completely unreadable and unmemorable. In the case above, the scammer’s disguised address resembled Smith’s address (the first digit and the last five digits), and Adam mistook the transaction from the scammer as the transfer he had made to Smith after checking the last five digits of that disguised address. He then copied the address and completed the second transaction, transferring 200 USDT to the scammer’s address, instead of Smith’s. What happened to Adam is called a disguised address trap.
It is not that difficult to identify disguised addresses, but great care is needed to guard against disguised address traps. Here are some tips from CoinEx Wallet:
1.Please fully examine the recipient address before making a transfer to identify disguised addresses;
2.Save the frequently used addresses into “Address Book” on the “Me” page through CoinEx Wallet; nicknames and remarks could help you locate the recipient address and identify disguised addresses in no time;
3.When making transactions, please copy the accurate, full address of the recipient (e.g., deposit address, wallet address, etc.), and do not just copy an address from historical transaction records;
4.Do not transact with strangers. We should be careful with transactions from unknown sources, and if there are any security implications, please transfer your assets to a secure wallet address.
In the decentralized world, only users are the sole controllers of their assets. Although scammers would come up with endless tricks, as long as we follow the recommended steps when using crypto wallets, they will not be able to catch us off guard.