An excellent article by Benjamin Powers and Colin Harper for Coindesk reveals that scam cryptocurrency apps are defeating the vetting process for Google and Apple stores and being made available for download by unsuspecting users. They cited the example of an app called “Trezor” that was uploaded to the Apple App Store and which was designed to look like it came from the legitimate trezor.io website, who brand themselves as inventors of “the original cryptocurrency hardware wallet”. SatoshiLabs, the makers of Trezor, do not offer an app. The actual purpose of the bogus app was to harvest data so criminals could gain access to the real cryptocurrency wallets of unwary users.
Powers and Harper provide other examples of fake cryptocurrency wallets and other scams in their article. The rush for quick and easy cryptocurrency profits has obviously attracted the attention of scammers too, resulting in the recent creation of a Reddit group dedicated to identifying and listing fake cryptocurrency wallets. A total of USD2.7bn was lost to cryptocurrency scams during 2020 according to the Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report 2021.
Click here to read Powers’ and Harper’s article on bogus cryptocurrency wallets for Coindesk.
