It's not about using passphrase or any other extra security including multi sig, once you installed the fake apps, they can gain access into your smartphone.

The most important thing is hold large amount of coins in hardware wallet or air-gapped wallet, not in hot wallet. Also don't save every password or any secret information in your smartphone.

A fake or scam app can gain access to your phone, but it will never know your passphrase.
Which of course should only be stored in your brain and not on any devices.
You can write it down somewhere safe as a physical backup in case your memory should ever fail you.




That is true, but sometimes even smart people do careless or dumb things.
A passphrase can save someone from their own stupidity.

Are you suggesting that people should delete and re-input their seed phrase every time they want to manage their crypto? That sounds like a huge inconvenience for most people.

Anyway, not surprised to see some fake apps managed to bypass the filter of an official marketplace. I remember reading somewhere that a scammer can submit a barebones app to get approval and modify it later to include malicious code. There are even cases where a developer got hijacked and they uploaded a fake app from their official store account.

One thing we need to know is that scam applications aren’t regulated there except maybe there is many scam reports by users and it is taken down, and one key method that scammers use to evade this, is by using many Apple of play store accounts to give good reviews about the application. So most at times it is best you do your own research.

Just like for instance in this case, a simple research would have actually let the victim knows that the wallet doesn’t support a mobile app for now, same way there is no electrum mobile wallet for iOS. Furthermore it is always best to verify the wallet after downloading to authenticate its authenticity, but many are too lazy to do that and that’s why we end up using scam wallets.

Do not get lure into downloading a wallet because of the reviews on the play store or Apple Store, those figures can be manipulated.


Passphrase does  nothing here. Once you enter your seedphrase and passphrase into a wallet. A scam wallet would have the ability to see that seed phrases and pass phrase and then can simply have custody to your wallet too, this is similar with having to clicking on a phishing site and signing in.

The only security that passphrase has is that when store at a different location from the seed phrases, if the seed phrase is compromised or stolen then the pass phrase will be another layer to stop the hacker from accessing your wallet, but in this situation both phrases are given to the scammer which stops nothing

A similar thing happened to me last year with Wise. I received what looked like an authentic email from Wise, so I clicked on it and entered my password. But then I realized I couldn’t log in, even though I was typing the correct password. It didn’t immediately click that I had been scammed. Later, when I finally logged into my Wise app, several hundred euros were missing. I complained to Wise, but they said they couldn’t do anything and couldn’t refund the money.

So, these kinds of things are possible in the fiat world too not just with Bitcoin.It’s important to understand, never enter your password anywhere unless you are absolutely sure the website is authentic.

For Bitcoin, only use trusted wallets like Coldcard or Blockstream Jade, which have air-gapped functionality. Your seed phrase should never touch the internet and never, ever be typed online or connected to a device that’s online.

If you have just a few million satoshis, you might be a bit more relaxed. But if you hold 740 million satoshis, you really need to do much more research and fully understand how it works.

Such a mistake,entering your seed phrase into a fake app should never happen at that level of responsibility.

One of the reasons why I don't download crypto wallet apps from the app and play stores without checking the official website. I go directly to the website for the official link of their apps to make sure that I won't have any problem at all.

Also, if it's about the huge amount of Bitcoin holdings and life savings that we have, it's best to invest to a hardware wallet.

People need to learn this, if they are owning large amounts of Bitcoin, it's better to have their funds in a secured wallet such as Trezor.

And never ever enter your passphrases to the new downloaded wallet apps without verifying they're the official app, this is one of the many victims out there. It's saddening to read such news.

It's hood to verify any wallet that you are downloading on your app. This will safe you from downloading the fake wallet app created by scammers. Store only little amount of money on your your hot wallet and keep your savings in a hardware wallet or electrum cold storage where the keys are generated offline.

Scammers are everywhere in the crypto space and they are coming up with new techniques on how to scam people and steal their crypto asset. It's our dity to follow all safety measures so that our wallet wouldn't be compromised.

I don’t use Apple devices so I can't say much on it but as someone very familiar with the Play Store and cautious about security, I totally agree. Just because an app is on the store doesn’t mean it’s safe. These platforms host millions of apps so yes, scams can slip through and that's why you should be security cautious.

Personally, I always make sure Play Protect is on (you’ll find it in the Play Store settings) and I look out for the “Verified by Play Protect” badge. I also check recent reviews, not just ratings and I’m always suspicious of unknown or shady developer names especially when it’s pretending to be a known wallet. I also avoid apps that ask for unnecessary permissions and I never install apps outside the Play Store unless I 100% trust the source.

Truth is in crypto, security is one thing we can't afford to compromise on and that's why we got to stay alert at all time

The way that mobile apps are designed, at least for Apple iOS is that each app is pretty much sandboxed to itself. You can install an app which is a known scam and you can also keep another bitcoin wallet on your phone and the fake app wont be able to access the other bitcoin wallet, unless you give permission.

So I dont think thats how the scam works. Its more like a fake wallet which wants you to input your recovery phrase and then it will steal the funds from there. It wont be able to access any other wallets you already have installed on the apple device.

I wont be surprised if someone complain about fake and scam apps on plays tore including the almighty apple store.

No system that cannot be flawed. So, despite the level of security these companies put in to avoid scam apps, they still fall victims in a way. Like I said a long time ago, the best security we can ever have is personal security. We can trust on these apps to stay safe in the space but we shouldn't give 78% trust without taking extra security measures to balance it up.