An address that is almost right
This is the most common way people end up on a copy of a market, and it works on careful readers as easily as on careless ones, because it is built around how reading works rather than around how much attention you are paying.
- What it is
- A generated address that matches the opening of a real one
- Where you meet it
- Search results, forum replies, messages, old lists
- What it settles
- Nothing. It is designed to settle nothing while feeling settled
- Cannot tell you
- Anything. The string is the whole trick
The specimen
7 7 x 6 l m f a ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? a s a d
Top line, an address from the published set. Bottom line, the shape of a forgery. The second string is deliberately not written out, because a made up address printed on a page eventually gets pasted by somebody. Lime marks what a forger buys cheaply. Salmon marks the forty characters they do not bother with, because you were never going to look.
Why it is built that way
Nobody is trying to match all fifty six characters. That is not on the table and never has been. What is on the table is the front, because a person shown a long random string reads the beginning, flicks their eyes to the end, and stops. The forgery is fitted to that behaviour and not to the maths.
The result is that the more familiar you are with the real address, the better this works on you. Familiarity is what lets you stop reading early, and stopping early is the entire opening.
Where they turn up
- In search results, on a page that was built honestly over months and then had its links quietly swapped. Nothing was spammed, so there is nothing for a filter to catch.
- In a forum reply, often from an account with years of ordinary history behind it, because accounts change hands and history stays.
- In a message from somebody you know, who got it from a page like the one above and never checked either.
- In your own notes, if you saved something once and never compared it again.
The comparison that ends it
- Paste the address you are about to open into an empty text box.
- Paste the one from your own file directly underneath it.
- Look at whether the two lines are the same length and line up. Two identical strings stacked are unmistakable. Anything else is not a match, and you do not need to find the differing character to know that.
Five seconds, no judgement required, works on your hundredth repetition when your attention has long since given up. Reading carefully is the fallback, not the method.
If you already logged in on one
Treat the password as taken and change it from an address you have checked yourself, then change it anywhere else you used the same one. Read your message history before you look at the balance, because a taken account is worth more as a way to talk to people who trust it than as a balance to drain. If you handed over a code as well as a password, assume somebody is inside right now.