How to Protect Your ENS Name From Theft and Scams

An ENS name is lost in one of three ways, and all three are preventable. It expires and somebody else registers it. You sign something that hands it over. Or the wallet holding it is compromised and the name walks out along with everything else. No support line reverses any of these, so the whole defence happens beforehand - and most of it costs nothing.

Remember that you are renting, not buying

ENS names are registered for a term rather than bought outright. When the term ends there is a 28-day grace period in which only you can renew. Miss that as well and the name becomes available again, and payments people send to it start reaching a stranger. Anyone can renew a name on your behalf and renewing never changes who owns it, so the safe move is to pay for several years at once - and still set a calendar reminder a month before the date.

Never sign what you did not start

The theft that actually happens arrives as a message: your name is expiring, an airdrop is waiting, a generous buyer has made an offer. The page looks like the real ENS app, asks you to connect a wallet, and puts a signature request in front of you. That request is not a login - it can transfer the name or approve a spender on your tokens. Treat it like a stranger at the door holding a clipboard. Reach the app by typing the address yourself, and refuse anything you did not initiate.

Keep the name behind a key you do not browse with

A name is an NFT, so it leaves with whoever controls the wallet that owns it. Keep that wallet on a hardware device such as a Ledger and do your everyday signing from a separate MetaMask account. On an unwrapped name you can go further and split the roles, leaving the browsing wallet as Manager only, which lets it edit records but never move the name.

Two things to do now: check your expiry date and extend it, and look at what your wallet has already approved. Revoking old token approvals shows how, and the roles guide covers the split in detail.