The amount of spam NFTs being sent is increasing and scammers are now using a new trick to try and steal the NFTs from your wallet.
They are sending you free NFTs and hoping you take the bait. These offers can look VERY tempting, so you need to know what to look for and be very careful to avoid getting REKT.
The WETH offer scam
Hackers are airdropping dummy NFTs to your wallet along with a juicy offer to buy them. If you try to accept their offers or click on their links, it’s likely you will be granting them access to your wallet and all of your NFTs within it.
These can look very legit, but because these are bogus NFTs, any contracts you’re signing will be fraudulent, (not part of OpenSea).
The good news here is that this exploit does NOT affect genuine collections, and it’s still completely safe to accept offers if you know the collections are real (see below for how to check if an NFT belongs to a genuine collection).
How to spot a fake
First off, always remember if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Automatically assume all airdrops are spam, until they have been proven otherwise.
Even though the offers can be tempting, and the floor may be 1+ ETH, it’s usually easy to check if there have been genuine sales for that collection.
Ask yourself why would a stranger have sent you a free NFT? Always do your research before signing any contracts and at the very least make sure that the NFT is part of an official collection by clicking on the collection name above the NFT.
If the collection is real you will see lots of genuine trade activity (buying and selling), however if it’s a scam collection there will be fake items just sitting there, and not selling.
Many legit projects (like IT Founders key for example) are still not blue tick verified by OpenSea so this is why you may need to study the collections activity tab.
How to anti-spam
To recap, the first step is always… DO NOT ACCEPT OFFERS OR CLICK LINKS ON STRANGE NFTs YOU’VE RECEIVED!!!
However, if you’re somewhat embarrassed about having a spam NFT in your wallet, the safest thing you can do is click the 3 dots below it and select ‘Hide’.
This will prompt an acceptance box to pop up from OpenSea, and this action is completely safe and does not cost gas.
Stay safe
I’ve managed to build a habit of always hiding any spam NFTs as soon as I see them, but I imagine this could become harder if/when the scammers start sending us fake NFTs that look identical to the ones we’ve already collected so we always need to stay vigilant in WEB3.
Many people are being exploited by scams such as this, so make sure you’re not one of them.
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Edited by Jelly Bean
Wordsmith and marketing maestro, exploring the world with speed and curiosity.
2 Responses
Nice work guys! This is important stuff for people to know
Thanks, we appreciate it : )