With its open and flexible nature, Ethereum continues to be a catalyst for new products, applications, and features centered around decentralization. However, this openness can also result in unwelcome activities happening here and there in the blockchain. Scams and frauds take many forms in the blockchain, and sometimes a simple NFT transfer from a stranger can lead to a serious attack.
OpenSea likens these unexpected NFT transfers to spam emails. According to the platform, lately there have been cases of scammers using these NFT transfers to spread malicious links. The method involves enticing recipients to view an NFT listing that contains said links to malicious third-party websites, and when the recipients visit and interact with those websites, it can sometimes lead to phishing and result in NFTs from their wallet being stolen.
Fortunately, OpenSea has offered a solution. It’s rolling out a feature that will automatically hide suspicious NFT transfers from view. In practice, some transfers will now automatically go to a new folder labeled “Hidden” on OpenSea, ensuring that only legitimate transactions are visible to users.
In announcing the new feature, OpenSea was quick to point out that there’s a possibility for its algorithms to make mistakes and hide legitimate transfers as well. When this happens, users can simply unhide the transfers that they are expecting. To help remind users, OpenSea will also periodically notify them when they receive a transfer that the system hides automatically.
Unexpected transfers will always exist on public blockchains — and while we can’t block them from your wallet entirely, we can help prevent you from seeing them (and thus avoid interacting with them) on OpenSea.
— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) June 13, 2022
Co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, Devin Finzer, commented on the new feature, “Unexpected transfers will always exist on public blockchains — and while we can’t block them from your wallet entirely, we can help prevent you from seeing them (and thus avoid interacting with them) on OpenSea.”
OpenSea said that this is only the first step of many that it plans to implement over the next few months in order to combat scams and thefts. The largest NFT marketplace has been making continued efforts in protecting not only its users, but also its community of creators as seen in the recent launch of its copymint prevention system.
Source: Cointelegraph. Header image: PiggyBank via Unsplash.
