Every USDT transfer is on a public record, forever, and there are companies that read it and score every address by the money that has passed through it. Money that once touched a hack or a scam leaves a mark, and the mark spreads to whatever address it lands in next. Nobody can refuse a transfer, so it can land in yours.
The whole of crypto hygiene against that is one habit: one address, one job.
Keep your USDT in separate piles and do not let the piles touch. It is the crypto version of keeping every dollar you own out of one sock, except here, once two piles touch, the whole world can see it, forever.
In practice:
Hold at one address and pay from another. The money you keep and the money you spend never share an address. Fresh money, fresh address. A new client, a marketplace, a friend of a friend: give them an address that holds nothing else. Do not sweep it all together. Moving money between your own addresses ties them together on the public record, and pouring ten addresses into one undoes ten addresses' worth of separation in a single move.
The paying address runs dry eventually. When it does, do not refill it. Retire it, make the address you were holding at the new paying address, and create a fresh address to hold at. Every rotation moves forward to a new address, an old one never comes back into use, and no two piles ever touch.
It takes a second, it costs almost nothing, and on the day it matters it is the difference between a nuisance and a catastrophe.
FROM HYGIENERead the long version