Aptos Wallet Private Key and Public Address differentiation

[vansterito]

Discord user ID

481762810704035851

Describe your question in detail.

Is there any way to differentiate between private key and public address of the wallet?
They have same format and same qty of characters
I have sent money to my private key by mistake and then someone has rotated private key to my wallet, so I am curious how did they understood that money was sent to private key?

What error, if any, are you getting?

No response

What have you tried or looked at? Or how can we reproduce the error?

No response

Which operating system are you using?

Windows

Which SDK or tool are you using? (if any)

TypeScript SDK

Describe your environment or tooling in detail

No response

[0x-j]

hey unfortunately that happens to a lot of people, on aptos,

• private key
• public key
• address
  are all 64 char length string starts with 0x, although you may see chunked version of address without 0x some times (i know, even more confusing)

all i can suggest is please be extra careful when transferring funds to a new address, always check the address on the explorer.
and you should always send funds to address, do not send it to public key.

[vansterito]

Thanks for clarification, but do you have any idea how scammers differentiate it?
How do they filter out cases when person mistakenly sent to pricate key?