Today a bitcoin is worth $60K and even the smallest part of it, the Satoshi, is considered valuable. If you combined the price of some Satoshi, that also becomes large enough. The same goes for Ehereum which is even more vulnerable to such attacks.
Probably that is the reason when we get a site that offers an opportunity for earning Satoshi or even if someone tells us to share our bitcoin address, so that he could transfer crypto for free or for following them on social media sites like YouTube channel, Twitter or any other websites. When we come across offers like these, we do not think twice but give them our wallet address.
In short, an offer that provides us an opportunity to earn cryptocurrency seems so lucrative that we quickly share our crypto address. Most times we do not notice that a small amount of crypto appears in our wallet, which is of little value, so small that even the transfer fee would be higher than the amount itself.
We call such a transaction “dust transactions”. According to knowledgeable sources, this could be a dusting attack. A dusting attack in which the hackers try to trace the amount in users wallets and then try to hack them. As usual, the attempt begins with registering your wallet addresses in the name of mining or airdrop or something similar.
Then a small amount of crypto sent to thousands of wallet addresses. This is kind of the beginning of an attack in order to track the addresses hoping to unmask or de-anonymizing, the process to evaluate users’ privacy. These hackers have developed methods of de-anonymize. But the advantage of blockchain technology is that all transactions get recorded forever. One can check every detail, including the amount of crypto that’s been transferred from one wallet to another.
If you have someone’s Blockchain crypto address, you can clearly see the amount of cryptocurrency stored in that account. You can check the complete details of any account on Etherscan. This goes in favor of crypto hackers that lure you to give your wallet address by offering you free mining and airdrops, etc.
The purpose of such transactions is to keep a watch on the activities of different active wallets, the amount of cryptocurrency, and the transactions in an account, and then they begin the hacking attempts. Some people would offer you “Trading opportunities”. Maybe some of them are genuine and doing this in order to earn commission from your transaction.
But when someone asks you for your “private keys” and assures you of providing airdrop various coins and as soon as you make this mistake you are the victim of “dust hacking”. I felt most mining websites that promised free bitcoins until recently were doing the same by giving a few Satoshi in exchange and solving a captcha every 30 minutes or after a fixed duration and then asked you to withdraw Bitcoin through your wallet address attached to that site.
People were doing this happily hoping to earn some Satoshi as mining fees for their contribution and becoming easy victims of hackers. Many sites like Free Bitcoin, Bitcoin Mining, Double Bitcoin are engaged in this work which traps you as their victim.
So what are your options if you still want to try them? Avoid getting into such activity, but if you still want to give your crypto wallet address, generate a new address and send it. Always keep a close check on your account and be careful if any small amount of transaction appears without your knowledge. Avoid giving your crypto wallet address to unknown sources.
Never share your password and private key. Do not create your ID, or share your mail ID unless you’re sure about the authenticity of a website. Try not to share your ID proof at unknown websites. Use multiple Mail IDs and use different passwords everywhere and keep them safe. Use hard-to-crack passwords having a combination of uppercase, lowercase, alphanumerical, and numerical characters. Finally, you should know that no one will give us anything for free. So a little precaution can save you from fraud.
Please note that all are not fake, but some offers are genuine. However, we should examine all such offers carefully before sharing our wallet address and other vital information with unknown sources.
