How to Avoid Common ENS Scams
An ENS name is a readable label - something like alice.eth - that points at an Ethereum address, so people can pay you without copying 42 characters. It is genuinely useful, and it has grown its own small family of scams. Almost all of them work the same way: make you believe a name is yours, or that it belongs to someone you trust, when it does not.
The name that looks like yours
Many characters look alike. A Greek omicron is not a Latin "o"; the digit 0 is not the letter o either; "rn" at small sizes reads as "m". A scammer registers the lookalike of a well-known name, posts it under a real project's announcement, and collects payments meant for someone else. ENS now blocks invisible characters and warns about confusable ones, but a warning only helps if you read it. The habit that actually protects you is checking the address the name resolves to, not the name.
The sites that want you to claim, renew or verify
These arrive as a message saying your name is expiring, or that you have an airdrop waiting. The page looks like the real ENS app and asks you to connect a wallet and sign something. The signature is not a login - it is a transaction that transfers your name or approves a spender on your tokens. Two rules cover this: reach the ENS app by typing the address yourself, and never sign a request you did not start.
The quieter ones
- Expired names. ENS names rent rather than sell. Miss the renewal, someone else registers it, and payments people send to that name now reach them.
- Marketplace offers. A generous bid arrives with a link to a fake listing page; accepting it signs away the name for nothing.
- Address poisoning. A tiny payment lands from an address resembling one in your history, hoping you copy it from your transaction list next time.
Do two things today: set a calendar reminder a month before your name expires, and check what your wallet has already approved - our guide to revoking token approvals walks through it. If you were caught already, this guide on recovering funds is the honest answer about what is possible.