Etherscan hides zero-value token transfers to deter address-poisoning attacks By Cointelegraph

According to an April 10 post from Etherscan, the blockchain explorer has disabled the display of zero-value token transfers on its website by default. From now on, users must manually switch on the display from the website’s setting page. Etherscan said it had made the update to deter “address poisoning” attacks that have phished and spammed unsuspecting users.

Address poisoning is a type of crypto scam where an attacker sends a token with near-zero or no value to a user’s address to “poison” it. Afterward, the transaction will be recorded in the soft or hard wallet’s history and can be selected when making transfers. The purpose of the scam is to trick the user into sending coins to the scam address by mistake. To do this, hackers use sophisticated software to create scam addresses that look very similar to “poisoned” addresses, with the same few beginning or ending characters.