Connecting shares your address and moves nothing
A pop-up asking you to connect your wallet to a site is a request for your public address, the identifier your wallet uses to send and receive tokens. Approving it moves no funds. An ERC-20 or TRC-20 token keeps one balance for each address, and that balance changes only through a transfer. A transfer is a separate request that your wallet has to sign, and connecting does not touch the balance.
Why a scam site still wants that connection
Once a site has your address, it can look up what you hold, because anyone who knows an address can check its balance. Looking takes nothing from it. The step that costs you is a second prompt, presented as a claim, a swap or a fee, that asks your wallet to sign a transfer. Treat any prompt that asks you to sign as a possible transfer, whatever it calls itself. If you approve it, the tokens leave your balance like any other transfer you make, while the first connection left that balance alone.
Reading the transfer record
A site's dashboard shows whatever its owner chooses. Searching your own address on Tronscan (for TRON addresses) or Etherscan (for Ethereum addresses) lists every transfer involving it.
Made-up example: a site shows a countdown and says a reward is waiting once you connect. You search your address on the matching explorer and sort by time. If no new transfer appears after the moment you connected, nothing has left your balance. If one appears, the entry names the token contract and the amount, whatever label the page put on it. Each entry in the list shows:
- the sender address
- the recipient address
- the token contract address
- the amount transferred
- the time of the transfer
A balance labeled USDT is only real if the contract matches
Some sites that ask for a wallet connection also display a token that looks like USDT but comes from a different contract. Tether issues USDT from exactly one contract on each network it supports, so a token called USDT from any other contract is not Tether's token, whatever name a wallet app displays.
Made-up example: two contract addresses differ by a single character. They are two separate tokens, even if an app displays both as 'USDT'. The explorer entry for a transfer names the contract behind it, and a lookalike page cannot change that entry.
Checking your own address before you decide anything
If you already connected a wallet to a site you now doubt, check your address on the explorer. A connection leaves no transfer entry, so if the history shows nothing new after you connected, nothing moved. If an unexpected transfer appears, the entry names the contract involved, and comparing it with Tether's contract for that network tells you whether it is genuine USDT or a lookalike. Before you connect to an unfamiliar site, enter its domain in our website checker, which shows what TrustSniffer has found about that domain. If the result raises concerns, do not connect. To see what is already known about an address a site wants you to send tokens to, look it up in our wallet checker. If the contract or the transfer record is unclear, treat the balance the page shows as unverified until the explorer confirms it.
