Quick test. Five questions—answer in your head before reading the explanation. No tricky vocabulary, just real-life situations you might encounter when using a wallet like MetaMask, Trust Wallet, or Phantom.

Why this topic? Because most wallets drained in 2025 weren’t emptied by a “genius hacker.” They were emptied with a signature. Scam Sniffer’s annual report tallies $83.85 million stolen by “drainers” (scam sites that trick you into signing the wrong thing) on Ethereum-compatible networks, and 106,106 victims. The biggest theft of the year: $6.5 million, in September, with a single Permit-style signature.

QUESTION 1

A site asks you to “approve” your USDT before a swap. Your wallet displays “unlimited amount.” Is that normal?

A) Yes, no risk

B) It’s common, but it gives the contract permission to move ALL your USDT, now and in the future

QUESTION 2

You sign a message, not a transaction. No network fee. So nothing can be taken?

A) Exactly, nothing moves without a fee

B) False

QUESTION 3

You used a farming site a year ago and forgot about it. It gets hacked today. Is your wallet at risk?

A) No, I don’t connect to it anymore

B) Maybe, if the permission you granted back then is still active

QUESTION 4

An unknown token appears in your wallet with a link saying “claim your reward.” What do you do?

A) I click it, it’s free

B) I ignore it

QUESTION 5

Your wallet displays a screen full of unreadable code. The site pressures you: “sign quickly, the offer expires soon.”

A) I sign, the site looks official

B) I close the tab

Here are the answers—and this is where things get interesting.

1 → B. An approval (also called an “allowance”) is permission you give a contract to spend your token on your behalf. Many apps ask for an unlimited allowance so you don’t have to pay fees again each time. It’s convenient as long as the contract is honest and never gets hacked. Whenever you can, set it to just the amount you need.

2 → B. This is the part almost nobody knows. “Permit” and “Permit2” signatures are free messages to sign… that count as spending authorization. The attacker pays the fees themselves afterward and drains the token in question. According to Scam Sniffer, Permit and Permit2 accounted for 38% of losses in thefts exceeding one million dollars in 2025. Free doesn’t mean harmless.

3 → B. An approval doesn’t disappear when you close the tab. It stays recorded on the blockchain until you revoke it. Tools like the Etherscan or BscScan approval checker, or revoke.cash, show you the list and let you revoke approvals (it costs a small network fee, which is normal).

4 → B. Surprise “airdrops” that link to a claim site are a classic trick. The token is bait; the site is there to get you to sign. As long as you do nothing, that token can’t take anything from you.

5 → B. Urgency is scammers’ favorite tool. If you don’t understand what you’re signing, don’t sign. Newer wallets increasingly display a clear warning: read it instead of dismissing it.

What I take away after poring over this report: losses fell by 83% compared with 2024, a sign that wallets and alerts are getting better. But attackers adapt quickly. Right after Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade, they exploited EIP-7702 to bundle several malicious actions into a single signature: $2.54 million lost in August 2025 across two cases. The weak link is still one extra click on $ETH, on BNB Chain and elsewhere. On $SOL the approval mechanism is different, but the “I sign without reading” principle drains wallets in the same way.

Practical tip: keep a “spending” wallet with only a small amount of funds for testing new apps, and keep your savings in another one that you almost never connect.

So, what’s your score out of 5? And did you really know the answer to question 2?

Source: Scam Sniffer, 2025 annual report on crypto phishing. Educational content, not financial advice.

#CryptoSecurity #Web3Wallet #Phishing #CryptoEducation #Binance