# Address Poisoning

> A scam that fills your transaction history with addresses that look almost like ones you trust, so you copy the wrong one.

Canonical URL: https://fudfomo.co/glossary/address-poisoning
Source: What The Block! Dictionary v1.0 (last updated 2026-04-25), browsable at https://wtb.fudfomo.co.

## Definition

Address poisoning is a low-effort but surprisingly effective scam. The attacker sends a small transaction from an address that starts and ends with the same characters as one you have used before.

Later, when you copy a recent address out of your history, you might pick the attacker's lookalike instead and send funds to them. The defence is to check the full address every time, not just the first and last few characters, and to use saved address books.

## Related terms

- [Phishing](https://fudfomo.co/glossary/phishing): A scam where attackers impersonate a trusted service to steal credentials or trick you into signing a bad transaction.
- [Dusting Attack](https://fudfomo.co/glossary/dusting-attack): Sending tiny amounts of crypto to many wallets to track or de-anonymise their owners.
- [Address](https://fudfomo.co/glossary/address): A short string of characters that identifies a wallet on a blockchain.
- [Wallet](https://fudfomo.co/glossary/wallet): An app or device that holds the keys you need to spend and receive crypto.

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