Address poisoning

What you'll get from this chapter: How criminals plant a look-alike address in your wallet history, and the habit that makes the trick fail every time.

Part II: Crypto Survival Kit · Chapter 9 of 9

Last reviewed: October 18, 2026

A look-alike address can be planted in your wallet history so the next time you copy from that history, the money goes to a stranger.

Address poisoning works because wallet addresses are long and people check only the beginning and the end. An attacker sends you a tiny amount of cryptocurrency from an address that matches yours in the first and last characters. That transfer shows up in your history. Later, when you paste or click a recent address, you may grab theirs instead of the one you meant.

Do not copy a destination from your transaction history. Keep the people you pay in an address book inside the wallet, and compare the full address with the one the recipient gave you on a channel you already trust. A hardware wallet helps only if you read the full address on its screen before you confirm.

That completes Part II. Part III turns to the device in your pocket, starting with the scam text.