Received 0.00000546 BTC for Free Scam ? Dusting Attack
If you received 0.00000546 BTC in your wallet then beware from such transfer, Scammer does this in order to track your identity and then ask you money for not revealing your identity.
This type of attack is known as a dusting attack where a small amount of Satoshi or any token is sent to your wallet, Bitcoin users generally ignore tiny amounts showing up in their wallets, so scammer began “dusting” a large number of addresses by sending a few satoshis to them.
They do this to track those funds and all transactions of those dusted wallets to find the companies or individuals behind those wallet addresses, this information is used for cyber-extortion on unaware victims.
How they find your Wallet Address
Scammer generally tracks those wallets who actively use one wallet address for all transaction and use that address to receive Funds above 1 BTC, You will notice that you will Receive 0.00000546 BTC just before or after any transaction. So they target all such a wallet with a big deposit.
If you have recently received a very small amount of BTC in your wallet unexpectedly, you may be the target of a “dusting attack” designed to deanonymise you by linking your inputs together – Samourai users can mark this utxo as “Do Not Spend” to nip the attack in the bud. pic.twitter.com/23MLFj4eXQ
— Samourai Wallet (@SamouraiWallet) October 25, 2018
How to Handle this situation
- Always use a new wallet address and stop using the same wallet address again and again for receiving Bitcoin.
- Never share your personal details with anyone, avoid using the same password on the different website, don’t store your private keys in a cloud server, many people click private keys photos and save that in email or google drive or Dropbox.
- Store your coins in multiple places, use hardware wallets like Trezor or paper wallet.
- Don’t share your wallet address in a different place if you are concerned about your privacy.
I hope you will take care of all the above points if you are worried about your privacy and also want to keep your wallet safe from scammers.