But in recent time these type of scams has grown and hacker are fooling people by generating fake vanity address in name of big organisations and people to lure people to donate to that particular address as most of them don't remember full length of address as its mixture of lower and upper case and integers. A recent report states such scam
It is not a fault from Vanity address, Vanity pool, it is from the side of people who are foolish and be scammed by scammers who create faked Vanity addresses. Scammers try to use those addresses to impersonate famous people.
Two questions for scam victims?
- Where is the place they got those faked addresses?
- How do they blindly believe it?
- Why did they skip the investigation or verification on validity of those addresses?
Scammers can create any Vanity address but people can decide to donate or not. They in the ends are the ones self decide they will be scammed or not.
So is it profitable for hackers and how much easy it is generate such vanity address? And its cannot be done by a single individual because it's require much processing power and other things.So what are your thoughts on this?
You can get an information from Mastering bitcoin, chapter 4:
https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch04.asciidocTable 6. The frequency of a vanity pattern (1KidsCharity) and average search time on a desktop PC
Length Pattern Frequency Average search time
1 1K 1 in 58 keys < 1 milliseconds
2 1Ki 1 in 3,364 50 milliseconds
3 1Kid 1 in 195,000 < 2 seconds
4 1Kids 1 in 11 million 1 minute
5 1KidsC 1 in 656 million 1 hour
6 1KidsCh 1 in 38 billion 2 days
7 1KidsCha 1 in 2.2 trillion 3–4 months
8 1KidsChar 1 in 128 trillion 13–18 years
9 1KidsChari 1 in 7 quadrillion 800 years
10 1KidsCharit 1 in 400 quadrillion 46,000 years
11 1KidsCharity 1 in 23 quintillion 2.5 million years
And this
[Guide] How to create your customized Bitcoin-Address (vanitygen) – step by stepUse Vanity address with your awareness on risks and benefits as it is a double-edged sword.
Vanity address security
Vanity addresses can be used to enhance and to defeat security measures; they are truly a double-edged sword. Used to improve security, a distinctive address makes it harder for adversaries to substitute their own address and fool your customers into paying them instead of you. Unfortunately, vanity addresses also make it possible for anyone to create an address that resembles any random address, or even another vanity address, thereby fooling your customers.