Is there anywhere to "flag" a wallet address as dodgy?

Donald Trump

I received a spam email today (as gaeilge no less!!! That is a first). It was bounced from an old mailing list I used to manage, to an old email address on a remote server that I have to ssh into.



Fair play to the hackers though, because they apparently hacked the server and took control of the camera etc and have some compromising videos of me. It must be a great camera given that the server is locked away in a room many miles away. I didn't even know it had a camera!!!

Anyway I looked at the wallet and there is no money in it (yet). But the address is not online via google search.



Is there any "service" online where you can flag a particular wallet? Just so if someone else gets the same spam email, if they google the address that they can see it is a scam?

grindle

Etherscan allows comments under ETH wallets, I'm not aware of any BTC explorers with the same functionality but would be surprised if there are none. Monero definitely has none.

Donald Trump

grindle wrote: »

Etherscan allows comments under ETH wallets, I'm not aware of any BTC explorers with the same functionality but would be surprised if there are none. Monero definitely has none.

I googled and found one site (can't remember the name) but it said it wasn't recognised as one of it's own when I entered the address.

I mean it makes no difference to me but I wouldn't like to see someone get caught with it. I was happy when I looked at it and it said balance of zero.


I just wanted something somewhere that a less technical person might find it if they googled for example. If they know to go to a specific site to check that wallet, they'll already be savvy enough to know it is a scam

grindle

Noble thought, but the type of person to get scammed by that kind of ruse isn't checking a block explorer before sending their funds. I'm surprised they're able to use crypto at all tbh, I guess there must be a couple of neurons still firing away at random.

Donald Trump

grindle wrote: »

Noble thought, but the type of person to get scammed by that kind of ruse isn't checking a block explorer before sending their funds. I'm surprised they're able to use crypto at all tbh, I guess there must be a couple of neurons still firing away at random.

Yeah, but I was thinking they might google the address to see if that tells them how to pay or something.




I will come back to it in a few months maybe and hope that the balance is still zero! When I googled, I found some others mentioning similar thoughts but one or two said that there had been a few transactions on the wallet in question in their cases indicating that some people had already been suckered

RulesOfNature

Who are you gonna report it to lol

The manager of bitcoin?

Donald Trump

RulesOfNature wrote: »

Who are you gonna report it to lol

The manager of bitcoin?

Have another go of reading the above posts. None of them are too long.



"lol"

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

Have another go of reading the above posts. None of them are too long.



"lol"

Yes I read the posts above, which was clearly written by some clueless 50-something old man who has no idea how pointless it is to 'flag' (?????) anonymous addresses by scammers who will just use a tumbling protocol to move crypto. It reeks of pure impotent senior citizen bewilderment and utter lack of understanding of how and why 'flagging' (AKA telling everyone on twitter about it MAYBE) will do sweet fvck all.

You should check if the manager of Bitcoin will help you out with that.

Donald Trump

Here you go genius. At least one such website exists.
https://www.bitcoinabuse.com/
I just submitted a report to flag the address in question.


I don't know how you can't understand a very simple concept. I'd say the main tumbling you might want to be concerned about is falling over trying to fasten your velcro shoes.


Do you not know there isn't such a thing as the manager of Bitcoin?

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

Here you go genius. At least one such website exists.
https://www.bitcoinabuse.com/
I just submitted a report to flag the address in question.


I don't know how you can't understand a very simple concept. I'd say the main tumbling you might want to be concerned about is falling over trying to fasten your velcro shoes.


Do you not know there isn't such a thing as the manager of Bitcoin?

LOL. Did you... did you really just try to use BitcoinAbuse as some sort of one up?

You realize they're worthless right? You're better off making a tweet that directly links to the address, instead of making an anonymous report that no one will ever look at.

Honestly the detachment of old people from this crypto malarkey is comedic.

Donald Trump

Can someone else have a go at explaining to this fella?

It's very funny that he can't understand a simple concept. I don't want to hog all the fun.

Are the schools finished already?

RulesOfNature

So...you made an anonymous report...on an empty bitcoin address....that no one will ever see....

What outcome are you expecting here?

BitcoinAbuse is worthless. They have no power over anything. And as far as anyone there is concerned, somebody just reported an empty wallet.

Do you understand how detached from reality this is?

Donald Trump

RulesOfNature wrote: »

So...you made an anonymous report...on an empty bitcoin address....that no one will ever see....

What outcome are you expecting here?

BitcoinAbuse is worthless. They have no power over anything. And as far as anyone there is concerned, somebody just reported an empty wallet.

Do you understand how detached from reality this is?

Did you ever hear of a thing called Google?

You can google this address 15WrKLCgDGGrv6brxtLP8Zf3kxiBsdybGh for example.

How have you not heard of Google?

I was here thinking more about some old person getting the scam email and being conned. When it looks like it might be more secondary schoolkids we would want to worry about!

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

Did you ever hear of a thing called Google?


You can google this address 15WrKLCgDGGrv6brxtLP8Zf3kxiBsdybGh for example.


How have you not heard of Google?

Yes and? Like this is some sort of zinger?

You reported an empty bitcoin wallet hurrah?

What is the intended purpose here?

Are boomers really this stupid?

Donald Trump

This is very funny

RulesOfNature

Like this is guy just pretending to be stupid or what?

BitcoinAbuse has no integrity and practically no one refers to it. Why? Anyone can report anyone.

Google that feedback BitcoinAbuse has on social media sites. Literally everyone is saying its pointless...because it is. A tweet has more credibility because its not an anonymous report.

Donald Trump

This is gas altogether. I'd say people will be able to have a good laugh at your posts in the morning.

Can you still not figure it out?

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

This is gas altogether. I'd say people will be able to have a good laugh at your posts in the morning.

Can you still not figure it out?

Yes. You made an anonymous report an empty wallet. You could not have made a more impotent and worthless action.

That's literally all of it.

Donald Trump

Ah, I have to stop it now. I feel like I'm taking advantage by giving you something to keep coming back and highlighting your inability to read and understand simple posts.

Tumble away to your hearts content :pac:

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

Ah, I have to stop it now. I feel like I'm taking advantage by giving you something to keep coming back and highlighting your inability to read and understand simple posts.

Tumble away to your hearts content :pac:

You made an anonymous report on an empty bitcoin wallet to an unreliable site that no one uses. All of this is ofcourse, part of a plan that no one else could possibly understand, and there will of course be a result to come out of it, one that coincidentally no one else can comprehend.

Do you understand how detached from reality this is?

Its apparent to me and everyone here.

Donald Trump

RulesOfNature wrote: »

You made an anonymous report on an empty bitcoin wallet to an unreliable site that no one uses. All of this is ofcourse, part of a plan that no one else could possibly understand, and there will of course be a result to come out of it, one that coincidentally no one else can comprehend.

Do you understand how detached from reality this is?

Its apparent to me and everyone here.

I doubt that. I'd say it's just yourself :pac:



I reckon that most others would have been able to read the first post.

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

I doubt that. I'd say it's just yourself :pac:



I reckon that most others would have been able to read the first post.

Nah mate, you are legit detached from reality. Twitter posts appear in search engines, and have more credibility than anonymous reports that anyone can make. I have stated multiple times now that you're better off making a twitter post.

I know you're trying to sound smart with these zingers but if you google BitcoinAbuse you'd see the feedback it has and how basically nobody

1. Uses it

and

2. Listens to it

Because they're worthless insofar as keeping tabs on wallets because anyone can report any random wallet and about half the wallets posted on there aren't involved in scams.

So you're choosing this hill to die on but its quite obvious you have no idea how BitcoinAbuse works, its credibility and trying to even report an empty wallet is something everyone will agree on is a futile and impotent gesture, archetypal of an old man trying to understand how cryptocurrency and social media works.

Donald Trump

Aw man. This is too funny.

RulesOfNature

Donald Trump wrote: »

Aw man. This is too funny.

This guy legit made an anonymous report on an unreliable website no one uses.

On an empty bitcoin wallet.

Guess who the real joke here is?

quinneerr

You are so concerned but you did not post the address here, but want to put a note on the address just in case someone else gets a similar email and decides to google the address that you are keeping secret, is that correct?

Donald Trump

quinneerr wrote: »

You are so concerned but you did not post the address here, but want to put a note on the address just in case someone else gets a similar email and decides to google the address that you are keeping secret, is that correct?

I could put it here of course. I'm not sure of boards.ie policy on posting things like that. It is a scam but boards.ie only had my word for it. I wasn't sure if it would be allowed. Additionally, I don't know whether or not boards.ie might not allow search engine robots. Plenty of sites will disallow.



The other site is better anyway (if you see my example from the google link) because it also allows others to flag it too and see it has been flagged

Mellor

Donald Trump wrote: »

I reckon that most others would have been able to read the first post.

I read your first post. I don't think the other posters first reply was relevant to your first post.

Your report was also utterly useless. Will help nobody.

Anyone who gets an unsolicited email asking for BTC in return and falls for it is not going to check the address to google it.
Anyone who believes the hackers have photos of them, with no evidence, is not going to check the BTX address.

Nobody who knows what an BTC address is going to fall for it.
There's a reason it is an empty wallet. It's a noble jesture, up there is no impact from it.

Donald Trump

Mellor wrote: »

I read your first post. I don't think the other posters first reply was relevant to your first post.

Your report was also utterly useless. Will help nobody.

Anyone who gets an unsolicited email asking for BTC in return and falls for it is not going to check the address to google it.
Anyone who believes the hackers have photos of them, with no evidence, is not going to check the BTX address.

Nobody who knows what an BTC address is going to fall for it.
There's a reason it is an empty wallet. It's a noble jesture, up there is no impact from it.

It took literally 10 seconds to do it once I had that website. The body of the email was in Irish (obviously google translate) but the sentence about the wallet said something along the lines of:


"You need to send $1400 of bitcoin to wallet address Abcedfg12345thslijfsfjsiojafsd23423 . If you don't know how to do this then google 'how to buy bitcoin' ".


So I figured that there is a chance that someone could google it. At the end of the day it probably won't help anyone. It hardly matters though. The entertainment with your man going on about tumbling was worth it.

Mellor

Donald Trump wrote: »

It took literally 10 seconds to do it once I had that website.

Nothing it my post referred to the time or effort involved.
If it is useless, then it's useless regardless.

"You need to send $1400 of bitcoin to wallet address Abcedfg12345thslijfsfjsiojafsd23423 . If you don't know how to do this then google 'how to buy bitcoin' ".

So I figured that there is a chance that someone could google it. At the end of the day it probably won't help anyone. It hardly matters though. The entertainment with your man going on about tumbling was worth it.

There chance of that scams fooling anybody is zero.

Anyone fooled is got going to understand how to navigate the register an account, but BTC, send process.
Any one who does understand, or can google it to understand will not be fooled.


Those scams need a click this link and enter you credit card/bank account details approach to be successful.

Donald Trump

Mellor wrote: »

There chance of that scams fooling anybody is zero.

Anyone fooled is got going to understand how to navigate the register an account, but BTC, send process.
Any one who does understand, or can google it to understand will not be fooled.


Those scams need a click this link and enter you credit card/bank account details approach to be successful.

Hi Mellor,



Just commenting on your "zero" assertion. Never underestimate the capacity of people to do stupid things. It is a numbers game. Those scams can and do catch people out. Scammers only need a very small percentage in order to make it worth their while.



Here is an example where of an analysis by sophoslabs of a spam campaign. ~51 BTC over about 5 months



Yes scammers can use lots of different wallets and other techniques to prevent whatever. If you want to look at this blogpost from malwarebytes labs, they show an example of where the scammer breaks up the address. This is obviously a simple obfuscation attempt to reduce further the chances of someone googling the actual address and seeing something about it*.

"example wrote:

Bitcoin wallet part 1: 1C1FfgyNsJGJZfuR2ePXx
Bitcoin wallet part 2: ABCDEFGHIJK

Combine part 1 and part 2 with no space between them to get the full bitcoin wallet.

I wasn't telling anyone what to do, nor was I claiming that any action would have any discernible impact in and of itself. I only asked whether there was a site or sites that basically would host a public log that would be picked up by search engines.







(* I replaced the second part of the address with junk in case there is a boards.ie policy against posting addresses)

Mellor

Donald Trump wrote: »

Hi Mellor,
Just commenting on your "zero" assertion. Never underestimate the capacity of people to do stupid things. It is a numbers game. Those scams can and do catch people out. Scammers only need a very small percentage in order to make it worth their while.

And any one stupid enough to fall for it isn’t going to check the address.
For it to protect anyone it requires somebody be willing to send money. As long as it checks out. I’m confident saying that’s zero people.