Address poisoning

Address poisoning is a scam in which an attacker sends a tiny or zero-value transaction to your wallet from an address that looks almost identical to one you have recently used, matching its first and last few characters. The fake address then appears in your transaction history.

The scam relies on habit. Many people copy an address from their recent transactions rather than from the original source, and most wallets shorten addresses so only the beginning and end are shown. If you copy the poisoned address by mistake, your funds go to the attacker. Victims have lost millions of dollars in single transactions this way, particularly with USDT on Tron and Ethereum.

Protect yourself by always copying addresses from a trusted source such as a saved contact or the recipient's official deposit page, checking the full address character by character, using your wallet's address book, and sending a small test transaction first for large amounts. Ignore unexpected tiny transfers from unknown addresses.