Look-alike address scams: how address poisoning works and how to protect your USDT

How the trick works

1. You send money to someone. Like every transaction, the payment is public on the blockchain.
2. A bot watching the chain sees it and generates a new address whose first and last characters match the address you paid. For a computer, making one is cheap.
3. The bot sends you a tiny or zero transfer from that address, or makes a fake token transfer that looks as if it came from you. Now the look-alike sits in your history, right beside the real one.
4. Next time you pay the same person, you open your history, copy "the same" address, check the start and the end, and pay the scammer.

Nothing was hacked and your keys are safe. The payment you made is valid and final, which is exactly why the scam works: there is nobody who can reverse it.

Why it catches careful people

Addresses are long, so wallets and explorers shorten them to a few characters at each end, like TQ7mL…Ya9Kd. People compare what they see, and the scammer forges exactly what is shown. The middle is different, but the middle is usually hidden.

Reported losses run from a few dollars to millions in a single transfer. The amount does not matter to the bot: it sprays thousands of wallets at once and waits for one person in a hurry.

Check your own address

Our address check takes a Tron or Ethereum address. Your browser reads its recent token transfers from a public explorer and lists any senders built to look like addresses in that history. It runs in your browser, nothing is sent to us, and there is no sign-up.

If it finds look-alikes, do not panic. They cannot take anything from you by themselves; they only matter if you copy them. Note them, and never pay them.

Habits that protect you

• Copy addresses from their source: the person's message, invoice or QR code. Never from your transaction history.
• Save the people you pay as contacts, and pay from the saved contact.
• Check the middle of the address, not only the start and the end. Compare a few characters in the middle with the source.
• Send a small test amount to a new address first, and ask the recipient to confirm it arrived.
• Ignore tiny or zero transfers you did not expect. They are bait, not money.
• Be wary of anyone who messages you first about a payment, a refund or a "wrong transfer". We never message you first, and we never ask for your recovery phrase or PIN.

What OB Wallet does for you

• Rows in your history can be read but not copied, so the usual route of this scam is closed.
• Incoming transfers from an address built to look like one you have paid are kept out of your history altogether, so there is no fake row to copy.
• The tiny arrivals that bots spray at addresses are folded away, with a count, so they do not crowd your history. Nothing is deleted; you can show them again.
• On the confirmation screen, OB Wallet warns you when the address starts and ends like a saved contact, or like an address you have paid, and the middle is different.
• Before you send, it checks whether the token's issuer has frozen the receiving address and warns you. Tether can freeze the USDT held at an address, and USDT sent there cannot leave it.
• To pay a shop that takes OB Wallet, you scan its code or type its number, so there is no address to copy by hand.

If you already sent to a look-alike

A blockchain transfer cannot be reversed by a wallet, by us, or by anyone else. Stop using the address, tell the person you meant to pay, and keep the transaction ID. You can report it to the police where you live. Recovery is rare, so prevention is what counts. Be very careful with "recovery services" that contact you afterwards: they are a common second scam.