How scammers "poison addresses"

The fraudulent technique of address poisoning, which originally appeared in other blockchains, has now reached TON. Therefore, in our #antiscam section, we will analyze what it is and how to protect yourself.

The scheme is based on carelessness. When you often send funds to someone, you might copy the address from your transaction history, glancing only at the first and last characters. This is what scammers exploit.

Here's how it works. They find an address to which money is often sent. Then they create their own wallet so that its address looks similar to the "real" one at the beginning and end. And then they send symbolic amounts from it to users who have sent funds to the real address.

After that, the user's transaction history contains both the real address and the fake one. And the next time they want to send funds to a familiar address, they might mistakenly copy the fake one from the history — and the money will go to the scammers.

In TON, it is more difficult to generate addresses than in some other networks. So, if you are sending $10 to a friend, it is unlikely that scammers will bother to fake their address. The main targets are the addresses of popular services like exchanges, where many users can send significant amounts.

How to protect yourself? In general, the advice is obvious. If you want to copy an address from your transaction history, check it more carefully. And it's even better to refer to the official source instead of the transaction history or use the "repeat" button where it is available.

@thedailyton