What a spam coin is.
A spam coin is a mysterious Ethereum token that shows up in your wallet, usually to promote something like an Initial Coin Offering.
In the past week alone I’ve gotten 5 Wolk Protocol Tokens and 1,000 Cryptonex Tokens airdropped into my Ethereum wallet. I didn’t ask for them, or buy them, someone put them in my wallet. You can't stop someone from sending you tokens (to the best of my knowledge).
For anyone who doesn't known Ethereum tokens can be mass produced in seconds and widely distributed to various seemingly random wallets cheaply.
While you can't destroy them, you should be able to disassociate them from your wallet.
You might wonder what the risk could be of having a slew of various tokens in your wallet. "What if they wind up being worth something some day?"
Maybe. Maybe that coin has some function that violates a law in your jurisdiction. Maybe it's the official cryptocurrency of the Fourth Reich. The point is eventually you'll probably want to get rid of some of these.
For anyone who doesn't have it yet. Anyone new to cryptocurrency or unfamiliar, imagine for a second.
Imagine you have an open wallet attached to you. This wallet lets people put money in, a certain type of money, let’s say paper money but they can’t take it out. What’s the issue of someone dropping Euros, dollars, pesos or rubles in? I mean it’s just more money, some may be worth less but as long as they aren’t taking anything out where's the harm right?
Well consider that any one person or organization can print their own money, monopoly money or a new money they want to have value and be used widely day.
But what if malicious or nefarious types of money were put in your wallet that could reflect badly on you for having it.
Let’s say the International Federation of Wife Beaters prints Wife Beater Bucks. They want to get support and attention so they go around passing the money hoping one day it will have value and get people clamoring for more of these hot new Wife Beater Bucks. So a representative for the Federation of Wife Beaters drops five Wife Beater Bucks in your wallet. Your wallet is open when you’re walking around this grand imaginary city you’ve created for this analogy and people can see the money that’s in your wallet.
Now let’s go a step farther with this analogy and say a grand imaginary city cop is walking the beat and glancing into the wallets of people who go by and he notices you have five Wife Beater Bucks in your wallet. Perhaps he’ll consider following you and having a chat with your wife. Maybe he’ll look around your wallet to see what else you have.
Now you probably don’t wish you kept the wife beater bucks right?
It’s important to outline potential dark intent concerning this International Federation of Wife Beaters representative. Consider that he’s got nothing to do with that organization, maybe it doesn't even exist. Maybe he works for the grand imaginary city police, maybe he wants a reason to look further into your wallet. Perhaps he’s snooping, maybe he’s already suspicious of you or a transaction that’s written on your wallet (yep the wallets have a written account of every time money moves in and out and the specific type, it’s a matter of record and can be seen).
Obviously this will not normally not the case, but it could happen. There’s a reason behind every action. It’s naïve to think Ethereum tokens floating down from the sky into your wallet are always going to be from marketing savvy developers.
I've created an Ethereum recycling bin of which I've released the private key here.
There's also an Ethereum trash can that's private key is staying private and safe as well.
Toss your Ethereum junk here
https://steemit.com/ethereum/@douschmitt/ethereum-token-trash-can-and-recycling-bin
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