Random Tokens Appeared in Your Wallet? What Airdrop Scams Want You to Do

Anyone can send any token to any public address. You do not have to accept it, and you cannot stop it. So the appearance of a token you never bought is not, by itself, a sign that your wallet was hacked. It is usually an unsolicited airdrop, and the question is what the sender hopes you will do next.

The common types

• Advertising spam. A token whose name is a website, a URL or a message ("Visit … to claim"). The token is worthless; the name is the ad.
• Bait tokens. A token that appears to have a large value, sometimes because a fake price feed or a thin pool shows one. Trying to sell it sends you to a site or a contract that asks for an approval or a signature.
• Counterfeit tokens. A token with the same name and symbol as a well-known one, sent so that your history looks like a real transfer. This is often part of address poisoning.
• Genuine airdrops. Some projects really do distribute tokens to past users. These are announced on the project's own channels, and claiming them never requires you to send funds first.

What the scam needs from you

An unsolicited token cannot drain your wallet just by sitting in it. The damage comes from an action you take:

• visiting the site named in the token and connecting your wallet,
• approving a contract so you can "swap" or "claim",
• signing a message you do not understand, or
• trying to sell the token through a pool built so that only the creator can sell — the pattern described in honeypot tokens.

How to clean up

1. Hide the token in your wallet. Most wallets have a hide or spam option, and some hide unverified tokens automatically.
2. Do not try to send it away either: interacting with an unknown token contract is still an interaction.
3. If you already clicked, connected or approved something, review your approvals and revoke anything unfamiliar: see how to check and revoke token approvals.
4. If you entered your seed phrase anywhere, treat the wallet as compromised and move what remains to a new one.

How to tell a genuine airdrop from bait

• Find the announcement yourself, on the project's official site or account, rather than through a link in the token's name.
• Check the token's contract address against the one the project publishes: see how to find a token's real contract address.
• No real airdrop asks you to pay a fee to a wallet address, share a seed phrase, or approve spending of tokens you already own.