Can we report a fraudster by their bitcoin wallet address?

I was recently notified by a friend that someone sent her a message (posing as me) on an app asking her to send them some bitcoin so they could make a purchase. Luckily she knew it was not me and let me know right away. I am trying everything to figure out where they swiped my picture from. Since obviously their account is fraudulent, I was wondering if there was at least someone I can report their bitcoin wallet address as being used for fraud? It may not help me, as Im sure the damage is done with them using my picture for a fraud account, but Im hoping maybe this will help to stop them or somehow make it catch up to them

DigitalCoinGirl

Posted 2018-01-03T21:49:27.157

Reputation: 51

Answers

Nope, sorry, there's no way to do this. The whole point of Bitcoin is it's censorship resistant, so there's no way to publicly blacklist addresses (although some exchanges have been known to spy on your incoming and outgoing transactions, such as Coinbase which have a TOS that prohibits it, and will threaten to close an account if you send transactions straight to/from a gambling site: https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement?locale=en).

Plus the user is probably using a new address each time, since you can generate as many as you like there's no need to reuse it.

Daniel Morritt

Posted 2018-01-03T21:49:27.157

Reputation: 340

I figured this was the case.. But call it wishful thinking.. I just really hate that people always have to try to find a way to scam great new technologies. The blockchain would do much better off without these people, but alas, I understanding it is probably no different than banking or anything else. They win. – DigitalCoinGirl – 2018-01-03T23:18:05.663

Anyone, including you, can look up the address in a blockchain explorer such as https://blockchain.info/. There, you could find out what else the fraudster is doing with that address (very possibly nothing informative, as explained in the other answer). Specialist police officers have the tools to do the same thing, but with greater sophistication (tracing every bitcoin transaction backwards to the mining origins in all the input coins). So, if blockchain.info shows any transactions at that address, you could try reporting it to the police. A crime has been committed (hacking into your account, false representation…) but good luck trying to explain about magic internet money to the average officer.

user58807

Posted 2018-01-03T21:49:27.157

Reputation:

Thats true, I guess I could look it up too and report it, but as you said.. considering there is not much regulation surrounding it all it wouldnt be too successful. – DigitalCoinGirl – 2018-01-03T23:19:17.357

I am not so sure in that. Many scammers and fraudsters find Bitcoin as a suitable tool for different scams and frauds. But what is the most important thing is the education about it and that is the only way to stop those destroyers of the idea of cryptocurrencies.

Even if Bitcoin is not truly anonymous and is semi-private, I think it is still possible to catch up some addresses. But for officials, that address is not important to do the hard work.

BoringMonkey

Posted 2018-01-03T21:49:27.157

Reputation: 1