MetaMask issued a warning to users about address poisoning fraud.
This new fraud approach focuses on scammers fooling customers about their wallet addresses.
In this hack, the fraudster uses advanced software to track your activities and create a "vanity" address that looks exactly like yours.
This fraud method can be prevented by carefully inspecting the middle section of an address before sending money to it.
That attempts to take advantage of user carelessness is on the rise.
The Metamask team issued a warning about a new scam that is now being used to drain users' funds. This new fraud approach, dubbed "Address Poisoning," focuses on scammers fooling customers about their wallet addresses to which they send money.
The scam is different from any other wallet hack that Metamask has ever seen. In this hack, the fraudster uses advanced software to track your activities and create a "vanity" address that looks exactly like yours. Then they transfer a small amount of funds to their address, which contains the same hexadecimal numbers at the start and end of the address.
By doing so, the hacker has already poisoned your address. As a result, the next time you copy the address from your transaction history to execute a transaction, you will copy the hack address and send funds to it.
The address poisoning scam takes advantage of the user's negligence and thrives on the fact that crypto addresses are too long for users to remember. The fraud is new, and the copied addresses might be for either the sender or receiver of the real transaction.
Preventing address poisoning scam
Address poisoning fraud is difficult to detect, and once the user credits the hacker, the transaction cannot be reversed. According to Metamask, this new fraud method can be prevented by carefully inspecting the middle section of an address before sending money to it.
Since fraud only works when users copy addresses from their transaction histories, the infrastructure service provider urged customers to avoid utilizing this medium to obtain the addresses to whom they want to send payments.
Despite being involved in a number of frauds in the past, the protocol assured everyone that it is doing everything it can to protect its users.
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