What is address poisoning scam? Etherscan automatically hides suspicious transactions to counter address poisoning scam phishing tactics.

Due to the recent prevalence of Address Poisoning scams, which have caused many users to lose assets due to momentary carelessness, the blockchain explorer Etherscan has decided to automatically hide related suspicious transactions. Users' fund transfer records will no longer be filled with phishing transaction records.

What is Address Poisoning Scam?

As the name suggests, Address Poisoning Scam refers to scammers using small tricks to "poison" the victim's address, making it inadvertently vulnerable. Although the poisoned address can still be used normally, if users do not carefully check during operations, they may unwittingly fall into the scammer's trap. So, how does this scam actually work?

The explanation is illustrated using images from Metamask. In our daily operations, we may transfer funds between our multiple accounts or regularly send funds to friends' accounts.

Upon monitoring relevant transaction activities, scammers will use an account generator to create a very similar address and send a very small or even zero-coin transaction to the victim, thus poisoning the victim's address.

From the example in the image below, the scammer created an address similar to Account 1 with the same first 5 digits and last 4 digits, but different in the middle, and sent a transaction to Account 2.

Subsequently, if the victim accidentally copies the scammer's address in the transaction record when transferring funds between accounts due to a momentary lapse, the funds may be sent to the scammer, allowing them to succeed. The most effective way to prevent this scam is to carefully verify every transaction before proceeding, regardless of the length of the wallet address.

Neutralizing Address Poisoning Scams! Etherscan Automatically Hides Suspicious Transactions

Due to the rampant nature of address poisoning scams recently, the blockchain explorer Etherscan has added a new feature. By default, zero-value token transfer records are hidden to reduce the likelihood of users falling victim to such scams.

As shown below, when this feature is not enabled, zero-value token transfers will still be displayed with a yellow warning symbol. Once activated, these transactions will be automatically hidden.

However, if you do not wish for any transactions to be hidden, simply disable this feature in the settings section for them to display normally.