Bitcoin Forum

The Arrival of Cryptocurrency to better our transaction and banking services has indeed lead to many scams. Notable the issue of getting scam wallets.
I have seen many posts about wallets scams from fellow newbies and forum other members.

People fall easily for scam wallets because of reviews and and ratings on Google play. Reviews on Google play does not guarantee a genuine wallets free from phishing or scam.

So How do you know A Wallet is scam free.

There are many things to look into for scam free wallets but as a newbie, I have narrowed it down to one.

1. This Forum: once you are prepared to get a new wallets either offline wallets or online wallets, just come to the forum and search about it if you don't find any thing from the search you can ask about the wallet. The forum will provide you with information about the wallet and possibly the correct site to get it from

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Do not fall for scams, the forum is here to help reduce it

There are other handy places that may help you find a good wallet too, there'll be other well trusted examples but on i can think of is bitcoin.org: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

They give you a quiz of what's important to you and then suggest the most appropriate wallets to match.

[the only scams I've seen from the wallets they suggest have been ones where people have clicked links inside wallets - one of the advertisers on mycelium and the phishing attack on electrum and that's probably a good thing to keep in mind if you're using a wallet too). All boxes that try to get you to click a link that opens a browser should be searchable (either by an error code or the popup box name).

Cryptocurrencies has not led to many scams, scams have been very common long before the first Bitcoin transaction was made, scammers just had one more option to perpetrate their scams through.
People have also been calling victims to phishing apps and links and losing money, even through their bank accounts.

Always download from the official website of the wallet and not from Google play store. You can also verify the signature for extra confirmation.

It's a good idea to search about a wallet in this forum, but take note that you shouldn't trust everything you read.
People here are free to write everything and scams are not moderated. So, seeing a post about a wallet and positive comments on this forum doesn't guarantee that it's 100% secure.

Stay away from wallets that are still new, they might not be scam wallets but since they are new there may be some bug that the team haven't seen yet, do not be the first users that deposits big amount of coins in such wallet thinking it's safe, it's better to go with a popular crypto wallet and before downloading make sure you go through the official website.

It's because that these newbies do want to have their own journey and before asking, they want to try it on their own thus, they'll ending up to scam websites and wallets that are targeting them.

Searching through the play store and as well as google makes them researchful but it's not the exact result that we're expecting them to have. In google, there are sponsored ads that are showing at the top and they're the scam and harmful websites that are copying the genuine ones.

Google can do better with it and they won't allow them to purchase those ad space because they're not properly screening those scam wallets and websites.

There are many things you can do.

The most obvious one is only downloading from the official website. But even that can be a problem for some who fall prey to Google ads or other phishing links. No matter how you look at it, you have to trust someone or something most of the times. If you search the name of a wallet via search engines, you have to trust the results. If you get the links from a forum member on Bitcointalk, you have to trust that person.

Verifying that you are on the official website can be done by checking multiple sources such as this forum, social media, search engines, even CoinMarketCap has links to wallets on their platform. Check that all of the sources are pointing to the same website.    

Everyone can do a deep search and know what is a legit wallet even without relying on this forum. In fact, there are so many investors who are not here, there are several forums that talk about cryptocurrency investment and wallets, and online searches. And I believe this is how some people know about electrum and hardware wallet as an example.
https://money.com/best-crypto-wallets/

I hope so well. But it all depends on our discretion to know what is a scam wallet or what is legit.

I feel many people make it past the risk of scam wallets at the point of download, where most of their problems start is how to keep their seed phrase and keys safe, because bitcoins are not stored in the wallets people download, but in the blockchain network, so even after avoiding scam wallet, there's still a lot to do.

Write down your seed phrase and have many backups of it, if the bitcoin you want to store is small and you probably will be spending it frequently, you can keep it in a hot wallet, but if you'll be storing a large sum, then you probably should buy a hardware wallet, maybe ledger or trezor, or you can completely secure your funds by using an air-gapped device.

You can also learn how to create an offline wallet on electrum here: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html after downloading from the official website: http://electrum.org/

This is one mistake that people do while downloading wallets and using any legit services that ignoring the orginal link of the website as we have seen that there are many fake oninon links for CM also surrounding the net in order to scam you of your funds but it depends on how you take these things seriously.

Like always check for the domain extension they have and for spellings like what the original one have which can be .com , .io or anything which you should always focus upon.

The other best way to avoid goggle ads is turn off or use tor browser for your safety and privacy for the most as most scam wallet promotion are done on chrome ads.

Yes there are some scam sites also operating here so you should look for trust ratings of the members but as you said scams are not moderated you should always DYOR in case of your funds safety in these wallets.But always use the specified wallets that are well known like non custodial wallets Electrum or hardware wallets.

Lol, this forum doesn't only discuss about wallet, actually you can search or ask anything as long as it's has a relation with Bitcoin. You can also ask technical stuff or even express your idea to improve Bitcoin development.

Another tips is don't use in forum search engine since it's not really effective, better to search about wallet review or wallet name and write bitcointalk.org on google search. Don't forget to not only look for one thread, compare it to other thread.

If you already know that Google Play is not a place that can always provide good applications, you will not easily download applications that you are not familiar with at all.
Besides that, if it is related to cryptocurrency, you can find more information on this forum.
Or if you want to download an application from the internet, you have to download it through the official website so you don't have to worry about anything.
We must always be careful and not easily tempted to try an application, especially if it is a wallet to store our coins later.

This is a strange way to trust a new wallet. Relying on the forum is not enough because sometimes many people may not respond to your question or they may not do an accurate search. Therefore, it is better for you to do your own research.

I remember a while ago that we were recommending one of multicoins wallet, but it turned out to be scam afterwards.

The two most common ways to hack accounts are phishing links and brute forcing. The latter is a bit harder thanks to the captcha you need to solve for each attempt and the cool-down between failed login attempts.
To keep your account safe from both attacks, avoid clicking on any suspicious links you receive from untrusted parties. Also, choose a strong and unique password and never enter it on any other website.

This is probably a better venue than the forum. There may from time to time be threads about wallets that contain malware, or are otherwise malicious, and there will be some people giving warnings, but for a newer user, it is often difficult to judge if these warnings should be heeded to or not.

bitcoin.org does not have discourse, and as such, there are no potential scammers promoting malicious wallet software.

Many people fall into using scam wallets because they don't bother themselves to even just read reviews and simple research.
Well, we could say the forum could help but just like the other members are saying here, this Forum is not the only place to say that wallet is trusted or not. You can find a lot of online reviews aside from here but the question is " if we are also reading it?"

In fact, play store has been known to have a huge number of scam wallets but we still found one legit or more, and that is because we care to read feedback from those who use it first. If we are actually doing this, I believe we never fall into scam wallets.

That's a good idea but not all people know this forum.
It might be good if you'll not rely on one source, as given above, Bitcoin.org (https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet) could be a good source too that gather information about a good wallet, once you're knowledgeable on it you know that a good wallet is decentralized on open-source code, never use custodial wallet storing in a long term.

DYOR is always good and never relies on feedback, especially on Google Playstore, they are easy to fake.
Open forum discussion should be better than the review.

Easily to be scammed or not that depends on how naively or carelessly one person is.

The most common way to be scammed (not only crypto wallets) is to carelessly when you are surfing Internet. Carelessly means you arbitrarily click on links in DMs, especially DMs from strangers. After that, you will be directed to a scam page but at that point you don't mind about double checking it with search engine.

Such as typing that domain name + "scam", then search engines can give you very good overview about that website.

About fake apps in Google Play, that are abundant but fake apps don't have too high downloading times compare to real apps. If you pay attention and careful, it is easy to detect fake apps.

The best way to download applications is getting link from official website.

Officially visit websites & download apps, not fake ones. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5259689.msg54725580#msg54725580)

Ratings/reviews always deceive, some can judge reading reviews whether they are genuine or fake (I think this comes after you fall face first few times). Next step would be to look for handles of wallet > check their telegram/discord, how their staff behaves. Still don't know? Then make post here if not already done by someone before.

Ratings in this day are no longer valid. Maybe, even though there is a decentralized rating system, the rating can still be manipulated. Moreover, on 3rd party websites, this will be more often manipulated. But it would be better if we are seek information from various sources, forums, social media and so on. Sometimes, telegram chat provides a more reasonable rating, this can be obtained from various user who made a complaints that are generally carried out in groups. for me, it's better to avoid wallets that are mostly have positive ratings with high intensity, usually scam potential (exception for old wallets, which may be 80% scam free).

True. In the platform that I was working as a freelance, there has been job posting of those product review for $5-$10.  Imagine having to pay someone to leave a great review to your product without having to really review it by themselves.
Youtubers can also do these, but usually those that are just around 10k subs, so that they would be able to leave no trace if they decided to close their account and rebrand to new ones. You can't just trust anyone that fast, so it is still better to sometimes find it out on your own.

Ratings on the playstore or app market can give some clue about the wallet but we should never trust them blindly, once you find the wallet then you can do some research on your own before asking about the wallet in bitcointalk which is find the wallet is custodial or non custodial and closed or open source. If a wallet is non custodial and open source then you can trust the wallet but for the safety of your cryptos just go with the reputed wallets which is in the use for years.

This is actually true; apps with more ratings frequently appear at the top due to the number of ratings and user reviews they receive. While it's true that certain applications may contain frauds, the majority of the best apps had to pass scrutiny in order to earn their place at the top. In order to avoid being a victim, you should conduct your own research and confirm that a wallet is not a scam or has previously been found to be one. As the OP stated, the forum is here to help.

When I choose any apps online, I usually check the reviews, not only the ratings. But as you have said, I was thinking that there is manipulation in numbers and paid reviews as well making no one will escape from getting fooled and a victim to scam apps or wallets if this is really the case. Good thing that this forum exists and gives some views and tips on how to choose legit wallets which is a big help, especially for newbies. Perhaps, the trick is very common but many people still got it, and that is because of fake reviews.

This forum is a learning resource, so if you have any questions, please post them there. There are many scam apps that hackers use to steal money from investors and regular people, and they have to issue numerous warnings about scam apps and social media. That is just the fact when it comes to choosing wallets. There are many threads that offer advice on which wallet to use and how to keep your wallet seed phrase safe.Am  dropping some few tips to avoid scam wallet.
-check review before downloading
-From the name of the app the spelling
-Any app  requesting for your keys avoid them
Cause from the review most people that have used the app will drop comments about the functionality of the app so it actually helps.

The arrival of cryptocurrency reduces the scamming rate in my area, because those boys who were scamming people have engaged themselves in crypto investment. Scamming is as old as human so it was not not the arrival of crypto that brought scam. If you have seen a lot of newbies complaining of getting scammed here, you would have provided the links for clarity.

People are scammed because they are ignorant. Those who are smart are not easily to be scammed and also another set of people are gotten scammed are those who want to make sharp sharp (quick) money. If your wallet is gotten scammed I would say, you caused it. If you secure you password and seed phrase very well I don't think scammers can do that to penetrate and transfer your funds.

The forum will definitely provides a legit wallet for you but the security is for your personal matter. Your security must be highly private. And another way you can also get a good wallet is the person who introduced you to bitcoin and the forum.