Bitcoin Forum

Just encountered a fake Trustwallet app recently, this wallet has been making a noise on social media, they are having a huge TWT token giveaway, I guess that is why some scammers targeting to imitate this wallet.

Make sure to check the ratings, number of downloads and the uploader on playstore before intalling it.
check the official trustwallet website https://trustwallet.com/ and click the wallets for your respective devices.

https://i.imgur.com/sBiJpTD.png

https://i.imgur.com/LzfOnSA.jpg


Thanks JeromeTash, help us report this Fake app guys. I reported it here (https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/contact/takedown)

Follow the guide to report the fake app on Google Play to Google. Of course, it is Google fault but we should do and contribute something to protect crypto newbies. Google do their works not good enough to prevent fake apps appear on their store. I don't know with their superb power engines why they can not detect later born apps that have names contains some words of initial apps. It is not a big challenge for them.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2853570

Damn,  it was released on 25th July 2020 and it already has 1,000 + downloads  :o
What's wrong with people not being vigilant?

Let's fload in there and report the app so that it gets taken down as soon as possible.
To report,  hit flag as inappropriate and then select Copycat or Impersonation and the hit Submit. Done.
Link to the fake app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trust.trustcrypto

It's a bot farm. They also have 482 reviews, with a medium score of 4.7 stars. No way this is legit considering that this is a fake wallet. They only do that to appear legit vs the actual legit app.

There is a giveaway by Binance and those scammers seems to take advantage of it and create the same promotions. This is bad, they synchronised their timeline with the real giveaway chances are those who download got fooled and tricked by this fake.

I am curious what is asking on this promotion this time?

Trust wallet hype is really huge. Their coin pumo huge so these guys dont have time to be attentive as long as they can join the free tokens event.

Not new ,there are many scam warning  thread for those fake wallet that circulated in Google play .

You can easily see the difference with legit and fake wallet base on reviews and download, other things is its easy to make fake review if you have many email thats what I think the scammers use to have that many good review or else having a fake giveaway or paid review.

yes, this is not new, but the effect is very dangerous for those who have downloaded this fake apps.

https://i.imgur.com/2USDvv8.png

Already reported it:

https://i.imgur.com/sboyNWD.png

Took a small dive on the Google PlayStore and investigate.

Thankfully:

• It seems like the fake version isn't being advertised/promoted(at least right now).
• The fake app is appearing on the 10th spot when searching "Trust Wallet", with the original Trust Wallet on the top. Still bad, but a lot better than expected.
• The fake app isn't appearing on the Similar apps and Related to this app section of the original Trust Wallet page.

With that said, yea, report that crap.

This procedure should be mandatory for anyone who cares about their safety, because as we know, Google Play is full of malicious content that is easily placed there. I agree that sometimes it is better to use a link from the official site, but you should definitely be careful that it is not a phishing site - because hackers also use this vector of attack.

If you already use mobile crypto wallets, do not store large quantities of coins in them - and never make copies of your main wallets using seed or private keys on mobile wallets - this is wrong and dangerous.

Not sure how many real user downloaded this fake application. But it is very possible by these type of services: ☑️ 5 STAR REVIEWS - Worldwide - Google, Facebook, Trustpilot & many others (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5251616.0) And I am pretty sure the scammer try these way to increase the downloads.

It's not new actually. we have seen it before for other familiar wallets. To reduce these scam we should be aware before downloading any wallet, also we should flag any app which is suspicious.

The safest and recommended is to visit the official wallet website that we will download. There will be a download link for the original application so that it will avoid fake applications.
trustwallet.com also provides 3 download options for iOS, android and download apps in the form of .APK files.
https://i.postimg.cc/5tq3mrhy/Screenshot-105.jpg

In the OP's description of the trustwallet application. The fake application has a developer name that looks like a real application because it uses the developer name "Trust Wallet LLC". Many people are fooled by the name of the developer. But for downloads and reviews are indeed fewer compared to the original application.

As TryNinja said, this is done by bot farms which make the application look downloaded a lot with lots of reviews, so that others will download it.

They don’t only resort to publishing the fake app on Google Play, but they've also publish it in places such as Apk Support, Android APK, APKData, APKfun, APKDownload, and so on. I’ve never downloaded an app from none of these stores myself, but if Google Play is full of all sorts of apps that manage to get there without much effort, what might we not find in these alternative sites.

Downloading any wallet should in any case be performed by following the links on the original wallet sites themselves.

I think the less tech-savvy people are going to get victimized by this. I hope it quickly gets reported and approved by the admin in the PlayStore. Applications in the PlayStore isn't thoroughly checked, and if it is, it still gets through. I think they need to do something About it. With iOS, you are quite safe with those kinds of apps unless you are jailbroken or something.

Officially visit websites & download apps, not fake ones. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5259689.0)

Thanks. Now I know I can rely on sort of sources to download apps: official websites. With the story, I learn that I have to check a strange word or abbreviation in company names on app listed in Google Play. Inc. for Incorporation vs LLC. for Limited Liability Company.

Trust wallet is a big one so that LLC. is smaller than its real entity.

That's too bad if it already has 1,000 + downloads. Taking it down won't be that easy as it seems.
Although let's make it happened by red flagging it as inappropriate copycat app, so that it won't have further downloads
My only concern are those that have downloaded it already. I just pity them cos they will never know what the downloaded is a fake trustwallet app

This is also risky if that fake TrustWallet app will make their app advertised, because I saw some android app in Google Play store that are being advertised, the app will make more visible to some users, like if you search some particular keyword, the advertised app will appear in some first part of the result, which some people will not notice it was advertised only or fake.

I am also surprised by the feedbacks or reviews in the fake trust wallet in play store, for sure this is also fake or made by the creator of the fake TrustWallet app.

Wow, the scammers are now doing everything to gain the money from their victims. There may be much more fake application on play store that we must be more and more careful when going to download. Moreover, the popular application should be downloaded. Moreover, this application of Trust Wallet is almost the same at glance. If we are not careful enough, we will get trapped because of this fake app.

Good advice, whatever the application, first, we must be better to download it from the website. First, we must ensure that the website that we visit is the official website of the Trust Wallet or even other applications. Then, there will be a download button and we can get the download over there. It is safer than downloading the app directly from the playstore. Or if they have an official community on telegram, they commonly will also give the link to download the application. Make sure that the community is also official not the fake one

Whatever the application, just ensure to check and recheck the application. If there is something strange, we can do further analysis and also report it to Google.

It will be taken down. All we need to do is keep reporting it.

According to some negative reviews of people who downloaded the wallet probably thinking it was the real trust wallet. The fake app doesn't allow account creation which means it's only waiting to steal people's seed phrases

https://i.imgur.com/YtzITJy.png

This is really effective. If we keep reporting this wallet app, it will prevent users to be victims of this kind of apps.

There are still people who are not reading deeper, after seeing some positive replies, they stop there and rely to those positive replies already. But what they don't know is that there are negative reviews which are more important that they don't give attention to because of carelessness that will eventually result to hacking.  It's not new, but we have to consider that there are many new people around this sphere.

They are the ones who are really prone to this hacking method, always best to share your knowledge to provide warnings
and to add more awareness.

Thank you for this information OP, I already reported as well.

I saw that there is a huge number who already downloaded this fake app probably because this Trustwallet is used to receive payment those who invested in FORSAGE a Ponzi scheme investment. Probably new investors are new in cryptocurrency and they don't have even knowledge even to download this wallet app as their part of requirements to receive their Ethereum through this Trustwallet app.

There's might a victim but probably a small amount, let's help others to be their next victim. Let's drag down this fake Trustwallet app.

Thanks for this kind of information because it gives a lot of awareness to the member and people right here on our forum this is not new there is a lot of platforms like that into the play store because it's just easy to upload your projects right there.

I remember the time when my teacher told me that it's better to use the Apple store than the Google play store because it takes a lot of verification first on the apple store if there are some bugs, any kind of malicious virus, and more than the google play.


I know the forsage this is one of the most common popular in terms of Ponzi scheme and I know this kind of scheme but still, I didn't know they are using these platform to transferring their funds. Good Information you give to me too.

Why this fake app mostly appear in google play store  (or I better say Android), but not on Apple Store (iOS)?
Isn't it an indicator to switch to iOS or that this OS is more secured? Trustwallet fake app appeared yesterday, few weeks ago fake Ledger app (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5263433.0) sneaker from google security. Experience of participating in bounties show that projects often ask to install their wallet, created for Android (iOS users must always wait for a release). I'm not trying to start android/ios war here, but for me, it looks like using iOS devices are a little bit more safe than android.

Wait a minute are we now in the atmosphere where by every where is not safe any more when it comes to Crypto and saving of funds in wallets we just need to be careful especially the newbies adapting newly into crypto-currency.

Believe me or not I think I am using the fake one already I will get rid of it asap. Thanks for this great information it will really help lots of newbies who knew not.

I'd like to think that they are using robots and they just accept whatever are presented to them not checking enough if they are trying to imitate another application, just like hey do on one of their platform Youtube they just accept ads not checking if these are part of scam giveaways, it's so rampant now on Youtube ads.

On the second thought, I also have the same feeling that I have downloaded the wrong or fake app. Good thing that I check it and I recently didn't find the fake app in the playstore, maybe it was already removed by the playstore because they were alarmed that is a scammed and a fake application.

I think the app has been taken down by playstore. I can not find it on the link to report it. It now shows that the item not found.

If any dev sends their app to app store it goes through quality checks before going public. This verification is reason why there are less amount of apps available on iOS store compared to Google play. Also, to send app to Google play, devs has to pay 20$ fee while iOS has $100.

IOS is more secure than android in terms of security, there is no doubt about that.

Yep, looks like they have removed it. Just checked the fake app link and it's not there. This is the power of reporting fake apps in large numbers.
To avoid downloading the fake apps, it's better to follow the download links directly from the official website rather than just use the search button of Google play. Just like Google search results, Google play search results also brings out a combination of both genuine and fake app results.

At this point, having seen so many false websites and apps published on Google's platforms, it's quite obvious Google isn't willing to step their shit up. Would've at least expected a statement from them considering the amount of malicious stuff they have on their websites.

Guess it's time for us to move to F-Droid and start suggesting devs of FOSS wallets to upload their APKs on there. It's a shame that you are probably more likely to download a secure wallet from a website you may have never accessed than it is to download apps off Play Store directly.

Feels like it's getting more and more worth it to de-Google everything you have. I get it that Google wants to have a platform as "free" (as in you can publish anything) as possible, but sometimes it's better to have quality over quantity and this is one of the cases. I'd rather have less apps available for download and be sure my money sits safe inside my hot wallet.