What to do if your crypto wallet gets drained
If unauthorized transactions drain assets from your crypto wallet, revoke all active smart contract permissions immediately and move any remaining holdings to a newly generated wallet. Professional tracing can follow the movement of stolen funds across the network to identify where they eventually land.
- You can recognise a wallet drain when tokens or digital assets leave your address automatically without your explicit consent, typically shortly after you connect your software wallet to a newly launched website or sign an unknown signature request.
- Common warning signs include unexpected signature prompts requesting unlimited token allowances, prompts claiming to verify wallet eligibility for free airdrops, and urgent countdown timers pressuring you to sign a transaction to claim rewards.
- Disconnect your wallet from the internet, use a reputable allowance checker tool to revoke all open token approvals, and immediately transfer any unaffected assets to a clean wallet created with a completely new seed phrase.
- Preserve complete records of the incident, including the full website address you visited, screenshots of the signature prompt, your public wallet address, and the exact transaction hashes of the unauthorized outward transfers.
- Report the theft immediately to Action Fraud or Police Scotland if you live in Scotland, and notify the compliance departments of any centralised trading platforms where the receiving addresses appear to belong.
- An onchain trace can map the flow of stolen assets through intermediate addresses and pinpoint deposit points at exchanges, but it cannot automatically identify the individuals operating those destination accounts or reverse completed transfers.
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Written by the Wallsec investigations team. General information only, not legal or financial advice.
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