Sometimes when a scam NFT shows up in your wallet it can be very obvious that it is a scam. Other times a scam NFT can appear to be authentic and credible. Recently I logged into my Solflare wallet and there was an unexpected NFT in my wallet that caught my attention.

100 free HNT tokens for me to claim. All I had to do was go to the site and claim my free tokens ! In the description it read :

Helium Labs is airdropping over 500K HNT to people active in the Solana community. Wallets that received this NFT can claim 1000 HNT.

After reading this a red flag started to wave. Over a year ago Helium Inc. changed it’s corporate name to Nova Labs so I found this strange to be referred to as Helium Labs.

A quick Google search for an HNT airdrop with no results added to the suspicion and on the Helium Network Discord channel a mod quickly verified that it was a scam NFT.

One of the most common ways scammers target NFT collectors is through phishing attacks. Hackers frequently execute “honeypot” schemes to lure investors. In this type of attack, they send fake airdrops to NFT holders to trick them into claiming tokens. However, when the victim proceeds with the claim, they interact with a malicious smart contract that seeks permission to spend their assets. If they inadvertently grant permission to the contract, it can drain the assets in their wallet. Source: Crypto Briefing

Since the Helium migration to Solana encountering malacious NFT’s is becoming a common event.

Scammers know that Solana’s low transaction fees are the perfect opportunity to send out thousands of malicious NFTs at a very low cost in hopes of draining your account.

If you have an unexpected NFT show up in your wallet do not interact with it. You have the choice to hide the NFT or burn it and receive a deposit of SOL.

Scammers pay a small deposit ( 0.02 SOL ) to create these malicious NFTs and when you burn them you can reclaim the deposit for yourself. When you burn an NFT the action is permanent and irreversible so the NFT is destroyed.