Spamming with worthless tokens, what's the point?

[Lucius]

I have received some tokens which have URL as their names, something like xxxairdrop.io or whatever.
So , those tokens can also be phising to infect your computer and steal your coins.

I have nothing to do with tokens, but if someone had told me that a phishing attack could be attempted in this way, I would probably have thought that it couldn't be true. However, scammers are obviously becoming more and more inventive in their intention to get hold of anything of value.

[SmartGold01]

I noticed that I received some kind of airdrops on a Polygon address, although I'm not sure when I applied. It doesn't matter.

Can someone specifically explain what the purpose of these tokens is and why someone does this at all?
I have no intention of dealing with that token, but I see that it was sent to many addresses, I believe that someone will think that they can get something out of there.

The address from which it was sent is labelled as Fake_Phishing3312



If it's a type of scam, how is it realized?

I witnessed same things when I swapped a token I received from bounty and whenever I do a swap from one network to another, their goal is to get you associates wallet to their fake site where they seems someone can swap the token with this your wallet would be emptied. And for newbies especially airdrops hunters are easily caught up at this moment since they would think is a free token and they could swap for a better token without them knowing it's a fake one and a trap for that matter.

[bitmover]

Well, I have been spreading awareness everywhere about phishing; unfortunately, I was the victim last night when an email was phished at midnight, and I did not have access to my desktop or laptop. I did not doubt the email because it was exclusively for airdrop farming. Since I was on my mobile, I did not check that email's URL and sender. I clicked on the link and went ahead and connected the metamask wallet. It takes only a few seconds to drain my entire wallet. Fortunately, The contract did not drain all the chains. The blast and Arbitrum chains were drained, and the ETH and Avalance chains weren't affected.

Sorry for your loss. Everyone can make a mistake.

I avoid keeping more than a few bucks on my mobile wallets. At most the price of the phone (my personal limit)

I don't have metamask in my mobile, just in my desktop. Maybe it is a good practice,  to avoid interacting with smartcontracts in the phone

[robelneo]

I have a lot of these on my active wallets. I stopped participating in airdrops and altcoins bounty, but I still get a lot of these tokens. It's just good that Ethereum and Binance have marked these tokens as spam, so you will get a warning and not fall into trading them to the fake trading platform. Since this is only on a view, it's safe unless you add it to the contract address, which you should not.

[MUGNIA]

I agree. Newbies must be guided with this kind of stuff to avoid losing funds. Scammers in crypto keeps improving to lure anyone. I have a friend who has been in crypto for years and always taking care of his actions every time he transfer funds but still being victim of scamming or hacking. Maybe his computer is infected by clicking suspicious links, so DYOR is must and don't always rely on the knowledge of a friend.

That's right, with guidance there will be no complaints of newcomers losing funds in crypto, education for the sake of education about crypto must also be improved because as we know crypto has become global and almost all young people play in crypto
and keep in mind that crypto crime is very subtle, without us realizing it, with one click the assets can be lost without a trace

[jeraldskie11]

I agree. Newbies must be guided with this kind of stuff to avoid losing funds. Scammers in crypto keeps improving to lure anyone. I have a friend who has been in crypto for years and always taking care of his actions every time he transfer funds but still being victim of scamming or hacking. Maybe his computer is infected by clicking suspicious links, so DYOR is must and don't always rely on the knowledge of a friend.

That's right, with guidance there will be no complaints of newcomers losing funds in crypto, education for the sake of education about crypto must also be improved because as we know crypto has become global and almost all young people play in crypto
and keep in mind that crypto crime is very subtle, without us realizing it, with one click the assets can be lost without a trace

That's true. The problem is there's no physical education out there for crypto. Mostly we can found it online, offering a lesson for crypto but people think it's a waste of money that's why they decided to enter directly in the crypto without knowing how risky is it especially if you're going to invest with big money. If I have a friend who really want to invest in crypto I will guide him to avoid losing funds.

[bitbit97]

As there are no free money in cryptocurrency, the only goal of such worthless tokens is to scam address owner. Starting from being imitators of original tokens, and ending with redirecting (not directly but through search) to phishing pages. The worst part of it is that blockchain explorer somehow show value of such tokens. For example on one of my addresses there are tokens that are $100 worth, they are traded on dex and their value is around few cents, but if I google where they are traded, search can lead me to anywhere.

[Gurujebs]

I have nothing to do with tokens, but if someone had told me that a phishing attack could be attempted in this way, I would probably have thought that it couldn't be true. However, scammers are obviously becoming more and more inventive in their intention to get hold of anything of value.

Scammers are just normal people like ever other people but they think ahead of everyone, anywhere there is money, they check critical ways where it's vulnerable and they take advantage of it. Sending of coins used to be a thing when new coins want to airdrop money to people for free task or even free but scammers found a way to turn it to wallet poisoning.

This attempt is mere tweaking of smart contract and the person must understand solidity before they can code something like that, a mere interaction with any coin they send for you, once you click the bait and swap, your tokens is gone.

[bitmover]

As there are no free money in cryptocurrency

I think the only place in the world where you can find free money is in crypto.

There has been a lot of opportunities of free money in the past. Airdrops which were worth thousands, bitcoin forks, etc...

[examplens]

Here's a crazy case of a dust attack that ended at the mercy of the hacker who returned the funds.
The purpose was to create confusion in the history of transactions with similar addresses, which ultimately led to the confusion of the victim who sent coins to the wrong address.

https://cryptopotato.com/71m-wbtc-dusting-attack-victim-recovers-stolen-loot/

[bitmover]

Here's a crazy case of a dust attack that ended at the mercy of the hacker who returned the funds.
The purpose was to create confusion in the history of transactions with similar addresses, which ultimately led to the confusion of the victim who sent coins to the wrong address.

https://cryptopotato.com/71m-wbtc-dusting-attack-victim-recovers-stolen-loot/

It wasn't mercy. The hacker received 10% of them funds, millions... and now he is "clean" I guess.

The victim first reached out to the scammer on May 5, offering a 10% in return for the stolen funds. In cooperation with blockchain cybersecurity firm Match Systems and crypto exchange Cryptex, the victim threatened to trace the funds if the attacker failed to respond by May 6.

....


Meanwhile, the worth of the returned assets hovers around $66.8 million because ether has declined more than BTC in the past week. Data from CoinMarketCap shows ETH fell over 6.4% while BTC slumped roughly 2.8% within the same time frame.

[NotATether]

Here's a crazy case of a dust attack that ended at the mercy of the hacker who returned the funds.
The purpose was to create confusion in the history of transactions with similar addresses, which ultimately led to the confusion of the victim who sent coins to the wrong address.

https://cryptopotato.com/71m-wbtc-dusting-attack-victim-recovers-stolen-loot/

That's why you're not supposed to fetch addresses to pay using the transaction history. Many wallets have an address book specifically for that purpose. For example, Electrum has such a feature.

But of course, if the problem comes from the likeness of addresses on different networks, well then it's much harder to detect, really. Except I guess for only using one wallet per network.

[examplens]

It wasn't mercy. The hacker received 10% of them funds, millions... and now he is "clean" I guess.

There was an offer of 10%, but there are no details from the conversation between the victim and the hacker. It is certainly a mercy that he agreed to return the money without any investigation.

That's why you're not supposed to fetch addresses to pay using the transaction history. Many wallets have an address book specifically for that purpose. For example, Electrum has such a feature.

But of course, if the problem comes from the likeness of addresses on different networks, well then it's much harder to detect, really. Except I guess for only using one wallet per network.

Honestly, this seems quite sophisticated to me, it would never occur to me to come up with such a method. Maybe because I don't think about how to steal someone's money.

Nevertheless, a banal mistake like sending to the wrong address due to similarity, and the amount involved is $70 million... It is quite irresponsible of this person to make such a transaction.

[bitbit97]

As there are no free money in cryptocurrency

I think the only place in the world where you can find free money is in crypto.

There has been a lot of opportunities of free money in the past. Airdrops which were worth thousands, bitcoin forks, etc...

You have said it - in the past. In the past we did not have such massive token spams on addresses. If we were talking about past, then I would agree that it was much easier to get something for free in crypto. If I get something for free in crypto today, I would be very suspicious of that.

But to be honest, I dont know 100% correct answer for topic question. I have address that are empty and never been flashed anywhere, and even they receive trash from time to time. If this was some kind of an attack on me, then there is no point of that, because addresses are empty. I can assume that this is a long term strategy and maybe they would play that joker card (token spam) in future against me. Glad that so far they did not catch me and scam me.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Sorry for your loss. Everyone can make a mistake.

I avoid keeping more than a few bucks on my mobile wallets. At most the price of the phone (my personal limit)

I don't have metamask in my mobile, just in my desktop. Maybe it is a good practice,  to avoid interacting with smartcontracts in the phone

Usually, I don't keep my crypto on Metamask, but as you may know, sometimes projects offer something good. As you may know, there is a new ETH layer2 blockchain named Blast and their website is blast.io, they are offering something good. All you have to do is hold ETH on the Blast network and connect your wallet to their website. It will generate some points that will later convert into their native tokens. So, I was farming their airdrops with this wallet, and the scammer stole all my ETH on that chain. But, never mind. I revoked the connection, and all other networks except Blast and Arbitrum were safe.