decrypt.co
In brief
- New warnings flag potential scams, lookalike wallet addresses, and transfers to first-time recipients.
- Added Protection automatically reverts transactions that differ from their previews, according to MetaMask.
- Transfer warnings cover mobile and desktop, while Added Protection launches on the browser extension first.
The team behind the popular cryptocurrency wallet MetaMask is rolling out new scam warning features in its mobile app and its browser extension.
MetaMask announced new wallet protections Monday, adding warnings for lookalike addresses, investment and romance scams, and first-time recipients, along with clearer transaction screens on mobile and its browser extension.
A separate feature, Added Protection, automatically reverts transactions that don’t match their previews, according to MetaMask. It launches on the browser extension first, with mobile support to follow.
Martin Peko, Staff Product Manager at MetaMask, said users often ignored scam warnings, suggesting they trusted the recipient or were being told to proceed.
“This told us something specific: they either trusted the recipient far more than usual, or they were being actively coached past it,” Peko told Decrypt. “That's what made us think a different kind of control was needed. We're also adding a route to priority support from this flow, so someone who's uncertain can reach a person rather than simply being told to stop.”
The new safeguards flag potential investment and romance scams, lookalike wallet addresses, and transfers to new recipients.
Along with improved warnings and protections, Peko said MetaMask is using AI to detect threats as attackers use the technology to scale personalized scams and disguise malicious transactions.
“Our security partner Blockaid uses LLMs and classification models, within custom agent harnesses, to analyze unstructured content across websites and social feeds at scale, alongside static and dynamic analysis of onchain bytecode and transaction flows to identify phishing, scam, and malicious behavior in real time,” he said.
According to Peko, MetaMask uses those findings to warn users about possible scams before they send money.
“This is part of a broader shift from static warnings to responsive, contextual ones, and much of it is already live—address poisoning alerts, first-time send alerts, and more in-depth security data on tokens and transactions, so users can make informed decisions confidently,” Peko said.
The rollout comes as authorities pursue services supporting investment and romance fraud.
In July, U.S. authorities seized more than $25 million in crypto tied to investment and romance schemes that prosecutors said defrauded thousands of victims across the U.S. and Canada. Earlier this month, the Secret Service froze $52.8 million in cryptocurrency linked to Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram marketplace supplying services to scammers.
The new features also come as MetaMask is preparing for Consensys’ planned separation of its consumer and institutional businesses by the end of 2026. (Disclosure: Consensys is one of several investors in Dastan, Decrypt’s parent company.)