How To Spot Fake IOS Apps and Protect Your Bitcoin Money.
Fake IOS apps simply vanish with your Bitcoin life savings.
Mining Bitcoin is the latest crazy nowadays. I don´t have to repeat the chronology of how Cryptocurrency is the in-thing, and probably the wisest thing moneywise today.
I come with potentially life-saving advice: how to spot and avoid fake IOS apps that can vanish with your life savings.
What´s the story?
One Philippe Christodoulou, an Apple user, is in great agony after he installed a fake app from the Apple Store. Philippe downloaded the Trezor wallet app onto his iPhone, deposited his life savings worth of $600 000, and the app simply vanished with his treasure now worth over $1 million. Ouch!
Forewarned is fore-armed. Here is how to avoid being scammed of your precious Bitcoin by a rising industry of fake IOS apps.
Fake Apps mimic genuine Apps on Apple and Android Store.
Yes, the mighty-security-conscious Apple can be fooled by fake apps. Whether it´s your Bank of America app, Robin Hood stocks buying App, or your trusted daily PayPal, always take minutes to study if what you are about to download is the genuine version of the app. When it comes to your money a little research goes a long way to protect against future distress.
A genuine app should have millions of downloads and quality stars. A fake app is…well…easily identifiable by a few hundred downloads on the IOS or Google Play Store. A fake app struggles.
But don’t simply judge by numbers. If it´s something that involves your lifetime savings, it doesn’t hurt to email your bank, stocks broker, or crypto wallet firm to confirm with a screenshot, ´hey I see five versions of Chase bank on the IOS store, is this the genuine app?´
Seems cumbersome, but there´s a reason why I say so. The fake app, in this case, Trezor mimicked the genuine Trezor app and managed to get listed on the IOS store and fool Apple.
The genuine Trezor is an honest manufacturer of hardware cryptocurrency wallets. According to Bitcoin.com, the genuine Trezor had always insisted that it does not run an Android or IOS app and raised concern about the presence of fake copycats on IOS and Android stores.
Google, to its credit, promptly removed the Android version of the Trezor wallet back in December 2020. Looks like enviable Apple has got a whacky lawsuit coming their way.
Don´t type your Bitcoin seed words without authorization
Don´t, don’t! is the message from Trezor to its customers. Never type your Bitcoin´s seed words on other web platforms without authorization from Trezor. Doing so could open your savings to alert thieves. A seed phrase, seed recovery phrase, or backup seed phrase is a list of words that store all the information needed to recover Bitcoin funds on-chain. Wallet software will typically generate a seed phrase and instruct the user to write it down on paper.
Guard your seed words like your life depend on them.
Apple likes to trump itself as the web´s most security-conscious player but the sad case of Philippe Christodoulou proves that don´t always rely on their word.
Remember: Always contact your stocks broker, bank, or Bitcoin wallet provider by email to confirm if the app that you want to downloads and transfer chunks of your life savings is the genuine app.
(Follow my musings on Twitter: @rmwareya )
