Bitcoin Forum

Never buy your hardware wallet from any third party, even if the third-party sellers say that they are buying straight from an official source it's still not safe.

There is this favorite YouTuber of mine called CryptoJay, who has always tried to warn his viewers about buying their hardware wallet from a third party, I am pretty shocked that this guy went ahead to buy his Nano X from Amazon because he has purchased a lot of stuff from the website before.

Somehow these people knew or maybe receive an alert when this YouTuber starts to move his Bitcoin from his other wallets into this Nano X, all his Bitcoin and even ETH were wiped off.

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

https://youtu.be/iebFLfKC2Ao

I can't even remember how many times I've watched his videos warning people about crypto wallet safety because he is one of my favorite YouTubers, seeing him lose all the Bitcoin that he has been accumulating for years got my mood ruined.

I still can't figure out what makes him does something he have been warning others about, I mean, what could have cost him from buying from nano official website?

I hope someone sees this video, could safe some one from repeating this same mistake, hackers and scammers can buy many hardware wallets and put something on them, and then sell them through Amazon or eBay.

Guy buys Ledger on Amazon... his crypto gets stolen... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5446015.0)

No wonder, he would have alerted others but being a human he made the same mistake by himself. I am just stunned too after getting this idea that hardware wallets are also not safe if we buy them from third parties. I never watched this person's videos but it do not go well for him. Like, maybe he fall prey to those scamming cost-effective ads of a ledger hardware wallet and think of buying them at a lower cost but instead, the side had been turned upside down for him.

I don't think so, now he can get them (money) back. He made a pretty big mistake by not getting advice from experienced ones he said there was a link to the website on the ledger's screen which he first thought odd but move on. after I watched his video why i am not convinced that he is telling the truth like he said my friends told me to not use this device from a third party but even then I bought, then this website link he sees on the screen even then he moved on and moving all of his money on that wallet instead he could just test it out like by sending little money to that wallet but no he transferred all of it. Plus I doubt him because he showed no proof of transaction on amazon buying that ledger.

It's quite sad for anyone to lose his coins most especially now that the price of Bitcoin and other altcoins are skyrocketing, because I just watched the full youtube video provided above and could come to a conclusion that the guy in the video did make 3 big mistakes. And they are;
1. Buying from a third-party site: Because thou Amazon is seen as a notable site to buy tech & other related stuff, since he had been once told that buying a cold wallet from a third party is risky and yet went ahead to buy it, he is to be blamed.

2. Not confirming the URL after having doubts the site was likely to be a scam. https://shop.ledger.com/products/ledger-nano-x

3. Putting his wallet password on the alleged scam site even after having doubts it's likely to be a scam.

There are several reasons about why someone that knows the risks of buying a hardware wallet from a third party still does so anyway, the first is arrogance, it is often said that doctors are the worst possible patients, and this is because they know about the different diseases and the human body and often question the diagnostic and the treatment given by their peers and they do not follow it, so despite knowing the risk he was incurring he thought he was above it because he knew it so well, and the second reason could be greed, it is possible the hardware wallets were being sold for cheaper than on the official website and he thought he could save a few dollars by making his purchase at Amazon.

It looks like we really have to be careful enough when buying a hardware wallet, things like that are really detrimental, especially when our assets are stored there for a very long term, but I don't know how the assets are in the hardware wallet can it just disappear?
After reading this I'll probably take a look at my hardware wallet to see if my bitcoins are still in it, because to be honest I'm quite scared, and I'm thankful it's still there, previously I also bought the hardware wallet through a third party local market in my country.
But maybe in the future you have to be more careful, so that nothing bad happens.

It's not the first time that someone has been victimized by this type of scam. Those preloaded seeds were already made and a newbie will never notice and think that those seeds written-ready are actually for them but the seller/scammer has done it for them and that's where the actual scam/hack happens.

Well, an influencer that's focused in crypto and became a victim of this type of phishing, it's unlikely to happen but he could be out of his mind when he's directed to a website and do those stuff like loading his keys.

I have a solid reason and it is not greed or arrogance.  Ledger has had their customers information stolen before.  And had it been a hardware store, I might not give a damn.  It still sucks.  But what does the hacker know now, that I buy screws from a store?

But we are talking finance and security.  This is nothing to joke with.  If I was a customer of Ledger and a hacker stole my information, they knew I was a customer of Ledger and they now know I probably have enough Cryptocurrency in my Wallet to afford a Hardware Wallet.  In other words.  I can become a target.

So now here comes the big thing.  Do you risk having some stranger know you bought a Ledger delivered to your home address or do you risk purchasing a possibly tampered with version of Ledger bought from a Third Party.

The perfect way to do it is.  Use a fake name with a disposable phone number.  Have it delivered to a P.O. Box.  Use a disposable E-mail address.  Now you are good to order from the official website.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

It is very risky to buy a hardware wallet through a third party or your favorite online store because after all, we never know whether the hardware was compromised or not, but if something like this happens, you have to blame yourself, why buy from another party? whereas the official one is much more secure from any threat and this happens often i see some other news about this case because they buy hardware wallet from third party.

If, for example, from the third party it is cheaper in terms of shipping costs or a few dollars difference from the original, it is better to suggest an official one because it will be safe and the assets stored there are quite controlled in the sense of buying from the company directly without other parties. I always suggest to friends to buy hardware from official Ledger/Trezor and don't be tempted by other offers.

I can garee with you on this regard as I will say that There a re alot of scams going on with ledger wallet. When you buy ledger wallet from a third party, they installed Virus when you input your wallet adress than all your crypto information goes to them and they can easily hack and than stole your money. I have heard a lot and that sucks because there are a lot of scammers and there should be a way to eliminate them. I do not know but let's see what will happen?

Amazon is one of largest 100 companies in the world, Amazon total assets are 462$ billions and they have 1.5 millions staff - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)).
I think they are safe for buying, even hardware wallets. This youtuber gets somewhere cryptoware virus. But the main question is  - how this cryptoware virus infected also hardware wallet ?

Sometimes experts also do mistakes and that happened to this youtuber. I don't know how to buy a secured hardware wallet and where to buy. Is there any way to check it's security after buying a hardware wallet? That will be very helpful if someone can answer and users will be able to secure their funds properly.

It is highly dangerous to purchase a hardware wallet from an unofficial source. It is important to use the official website for each hardware wallet. When opening the hardware wallet, it is crucial to check for a pre-generated seed. Additionally, Ledger Live can verify whether the hardware device is genuine or fake. To avoid any issues, it is essential to rely solely on official sources. Personally, I purchased my hardware wallet from the Amazon Ledger official store, and everything went smoothly. The device was successfully verified with Ledger Live. Despite the fact that the device was new, I reset it before generating the seed. To protect yourself from hacking, follow these steps.

It's either he doesn't practice what he preach or he's just doing it for the views. Idk... it's such a rookie mistake if he indeed advocates security for crypto. In addition, people have also advised him to not purchase from amazon before everything went down and of course, our yt guy ignored it.

At the end of the day, we don't know what happens beyond closed doors and it's all parasocial so don't let it get to you op.

Initially, hardware wallets are designed to prevent engagement of third parties which can be malicious to steal your seed. If you buy a (used) second-hand hardware wallet, that reason to use a hardware wallet is no longer solid. You break it by yourself and have to depend on legitimacy and kindness of the seller to protect your coins.

If sellers are bad guys, they will install backdoors to steal your cryptocurrency.

Finally, let's think if you afford to spend money to buy a hardware wallet, why you can not afford a bit more fund to buy a legit one rather than a second-hand one?

If your fund is not enough (yet), you can use desktop wallet, browser wallet that is safer than second-hand hardware wallet with possible backdoors. When you have enough fund, let's buy official one.

Almost any business or individual could create an Amazon seller account and sell stuff on Amazon. They could buy fake Amazon reviews to boost their sales and create a fake positive reputation for their business. Facebook and Telegram were full with Amazon review groups.
The fact that Amazon is a legit company doesn't mean that scammers won't use Amazon to find victims. The same thing applies to eBay.
I don't know about crypto viruses infecting hardware wallets. Maybe you could explain more about what type of crypto virus could potentially infect a cold wallet.

First of all, it's not really good to buy a hardware wallet that has a thrid party, brand new is still better. Because if you buy a second hand hardware wallet, chances are high that the wallet has been compromised.

      In addition to this, hackers do not choose the wallet they enter as long as they have a chance they will enter it. So here on this topic, it's just embarrassing that the one who keeps reminding is the one who got hacked or had his wallet stolen because of his lack of knowledge in my opinion.

No, there are no "reported" virus that can infect hardware wallets... so you can discount that. In all probability ...the hardware wallet were intercepted by someone during the transport from the supplier to Amazon and they opened the box and somehow retrieved the "seed" or "private keys" for the wallet.

I have seen a video where they extracted information with special hardware from the hardware wallet, but they have to have physical access to the device to do it.  :P

Not possible in this case.


Because the hardware wallet itself is bugged, not his computers. You can't infect a computer using some signed transaction ID alone.

A lot of people don't know about hard wallets or are not that conscious about storing cryptocurrency.They don't even know that their assets are insecure in exchanges and hard wallet is the best option where their assets can always be kept safe.Often investors make a mistake in buying a hard wallet because they don't know which hard wallet to buy from where, so they get it from a third party and then lose all their assets.Hardware should always be purchased from the official website of the same company. Hardware purchased from any other place can never be trusted and third party vendors should never be trusted.I myself have taken a safepal wallet for myself but purchased from its official website.Because I know that hard wallet bought only from official website can be trusted.The hardware purchased from the official website may cost more, but it also gives you complete asset security for a higher price.

The way in which you hold your assets in soft wallets such as trust wallet and meta mask wallet and you have sead phrases.And as long as your private keys are safe with you, your assets are also safe, but if someone gets hold of your private keys, they he can easily transfer your assets from your wallet.Similarly, hard wallets also have private keys.And by buying from a third party, there is a fear that he has not got the private keys.Which can later be used to steal all your assets.There is also a software application of this company to view the assets in the hard wallet, by downloading it you can get complete information about your hard wallet.Just as hard wallets should always be purchased from official websites, caution should be exercised when downloading software.

Well he is not a big influencer, hu just got like 700+ subscriber and i doubt he is using some kind of AI tool to make it eye as looking in the camera without blinking that's weird i almost watch 2 maybe 3 of his YouTube videos and he did not blink his eyes for like 2 to 5 mints.

Then i thought maybe he is using some kind of tool (there are many in the market) that makes your eye's position as you are looking straight while you can look anywhere like on another monitor to read the videos script. honestly he looks like a newbie or at least new at making videos. Because he did not make his point evidence proof like he is just saying those words and telling the world that he made 3 mistakes which he knew was mistakes even then he did them and made a videos of it without no proof. Like he can give a proof of payment that he made to buy that ledger from amazon

This is like do what I say and not what I do. It is funny because in the two weeks or one month we would read another story or interview of someone whose bitcoin was wiped off because they threw caution to the wind and then went ahead to buy their hardware wallet from a so-called trusted online vendor with "five-star rating". I feel bad for the guy, and I truly hope that people learn from this silly, avoidable, and costly mistake.