Man Blames Apple After Scam iPhone App Steals $ 1 Million In Bitcoin



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Bitcoin’s value is rising again, which has turned some moderately wealthy crypto enthusiasts into millionaires. Phillipe Christodoulou was one of them with his treasure trove of 17.1 Bitcoins, worth just over $ 1 million at current exchange rates. However, he recently made the mistake of downloading an app from the iOS App Store. In the blink of an eye, his fortune was gone and he blames Apple.

Unlike traditional banking and fiat money, there is no safeguard or legal framework for recovering stolen cryptocurrency. If you lose access to the bits of data that represent your digital money, it’s gone forever. People regularly threw huge fortunes in the trash or accidentally transferred millions of dollars to the wrong anonymous digital wallets. Christodoulou thought he was doing everything right by keeping his Bitcoins in a secure hardware wallet called Trezor, but then he went to the App Store for a Trezor app.

Apple has long claimed that its app repository is superior to Google’s because it is highly organized and more secure. Every app in the App Store goes through a review process, leading to countless horror stories about developers who are unable to publish or update apps due to an esoteric rule or violation. of content. The bogus Trezor app has done well, however.

Trezor uses a website for PIN authentication before the hardware wallet is unlocked, and it looks like Christodoulou thought there would be an app. However, the company does not manufacture any. The scam app had five stars and looked legitimate, but after using the app to unlock his wallet, those 17.1 Bitcoins were gone forever. Christodoulou is angry with thieves, of course, but he reserves most of his venom for Apple himself. “They betrayed the trust I had in them,” Christodoulou told the Washington Post.

Trezor hardware wallets are a secure way to store your Bitcoin … unless you give access to a malicious application.

It is easy to sympathize with Christodoulou. Apple has told people to download with confidence for years, citing its careful conservation of the Walled Garden. Apple has confirmed that there are more of these Bitcoin scams hidden in the App Store’s nearly $ 2 million catalog. However, he will not talk about the extent of the problem. Google is not immune either. Fake Trezor apps are also appearing there, but Android crooks haven’t hit the jackpot like they did with Christodoulou.

Apple declined to identify the scammer’s account or indicate whether he provided any information to law enforcement. It is unlikely that anything can get Christodoulou his Bitcoins back. Anyone with a large crypto cache is advised to pay close attention to the applications they use to access it.

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