Freewallet wrongfully promoting their services on news platform

Some week ago, Elon Musk issued short shrift to Freewallet on Twitter after the cryptocurrency wallet provider attempted to use the Tesla CEO’s tweet celebrating dogecoin to promote its services. Elon Musk saying Freewallet's app "sucks,"

Maybe because of that, Freewallet providers now depicting Freewallet as a good wallet, I was surprised with many information I read today on cointelegraph, many people will be thinking freewallet offer the best security and safety.

For newbies to understand more about wallets
In this regard, there are two types of wallets, custodial and noncustodial wallets.

Noncustodial wallets are wallets that generate private keys for users, the private keys makes users the owner of the coin they stored. For example, bitcoin wallet store the keys (private keys, public keys and addresses), bitcoin itself is stored on bitcoin blockchain, while private keys are to unlock the bitcoin for users to spend. It means, if you owns the private key, you owns the coin, it also means no one can control the coin for you, no third party needed when I can have access to my coins successfully, why depending on third party. Only what I need is to protect my private key, or seed phrase that generates the private key. Although, if passphrase or key extension is enabled, it must also be appropriately saved from attackers and damages.

Custodial wallets
Third party like Coinbase or Freewallet will have the private key, while users will have only addresses, this means that the their party have control over the coin, they have the power to freeze users coin, they have the power the block users account, they even have power to send the coins. But, all the wallet companies that provide the custodial service will say is that users have full control over his/her coin, that is just a deceit, users do not have the full control, the company do.

Custodial and noncustodial exchanges
From the above explanations, I believe the differences between custodial and noncustodial exchanges can be understood, exchanges are used for trading, but wallets are used for saving. Most noncustodial exchanges are third party that trade a coin for another coin from your private key wallet addresses, which is not the focus now. But, custodial exchanges are the most common, some people will use such custodial exchanges to save cryptocurrencies, which is completely wrong as they are often hacked.

The reason to go for noncustodail wallet for savings
Also open source wallets are recommended, that is also noncustodial. Open source because you will know the source code your wallet uses and available to the public, noncustodial because you have the private key. If no attackers knows the private key, no issue and you are safe. Offline wallets are the safest but not the focus here.

What I read recently on Cointelegraph
We have seen how google makes the world complicated in a way some people are exposed to scam because of the services they are providing, collecting peoples data, now companies are paying news companies to help them advertise their services, even with wrong information to promote them.

Quote from: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-wallet-platforms-are-taking-on-exchanges

Exchanges do have downsides. Binance and Coinbase have both suffered outages when Bitcoin surges — and in some cases, this has left traders unable to execute transactions in a timely fashion. Such breaks can prove to be extremely expensive, as a lack of immediate access can mean users are unable to buy and sell at optimal prices.

Another big platform, OKEx, recently hit the headlines when it abruptly suspended withdrawals for six weeks — leaving panicked customers unsure whether or not their funds were safe. Although this exchange attempted to make things right through a generous compensation program, users appeared to be pulling their funds out fast when services returned to normal.

As retail and institutional interest in digital assets shows no sign of abating, wallets are starting to serve as a viable alternative for those who are unsure about entrusting their funds in an exchange. Several platforms also claim that they offer low trading fees from the very beginning — a contrast to exchanges, which may only unlock their most preferential rates to those who hold its native cryptocurrency and lock it away for long periods of time.

Streamlining the experience
Freewallet is one wallet provider that says its ecosystem offers a compelling alternative to crypto exchanges.

The company says it is aiming to create a one stop shop for digital assets, meaning that its users only need a single account to complete all of their transactions. This eliminates the need for logins with multiple sites, most of whom will take fees along the way. A recent revamp saw the platform expand its exchange capabilities — decreasing transaction processing times substantially, with an average completion time of under a minute.

Although the platform says convenience is something that weighs heavily on the minds of crypto owners, it stresses that there are other important things to consider too. According to Freewallet, its security is unparalleled — with cold storage employed to ensure that crypto assets are kept safe at all times. Additional security measures are also in force to ensure that the integrity of user accounts isn’t compromised.

Freewallet also says it has sought to offer some of the most competitive fees in the industry — making it easy to buy, sell and convert between more than 100 cryptocurrencies inexpensively. This is coupled by real-time pricing data that accurately reflects what’s going on in the markets, at a time when Bitcoin can fluctuate by hundreds of dollars in a single hour.

Fee-free transactions are also offered when Freewallet users are sending funds to another account that’s on the platform, with payments arriving instantly. Meanwhile, a new feature means that users can buy gift cards for online and brick-and-mortar businesses with any cryptocurrency supported by the platform — including Amazon, eBay and iTunes. An integration with MoonPay also means more than 40 major fiat currencies can be used to purchase a plethora of digital assets.

Freewallet will be hoping that its mobile-first secure storage, complete with an integrated trading platform, delivers a more satisfying user experience than what mainstream exchanges currently provide. First impressions matter, and simplicity will be key if the public is going to be persuaded that digital assets are right for them.

If you click the link, you will read the news in full, Cointelegraph pointed out that custodial exchanges are often hacked, and the reason why people should use wallet. But, is freewallet a good example. Elon Musk is making true statement about Freewallet, they can lock somes account, and they truly sucks because they are making people to think users is safe while using their wallet. The world is now becoming a place full of false news, making our own research is now a necessity, else, we will be lost in false information.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-wallet-platforms-are-taking-on-exchanges
https://www.coindesk.com/elon-musk-bites-back-at-freewallet-after-dogecoin-tweet?amp=1
https://modernconsensus.com/people/your-app-sucks-elon-musk-to-crypto-wallet-freewallet/
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1359390452772966404

I don't know which you states that as false statement?

IIRC, coinbase went temporarily down multiple times at the time of price surge but they don't publicly stated that they were out of bitcoin storage and the same happened with Binance, maybe?

But freewallet mentioned that they are custodial and here to provide convenient service to people who don't want to take all the responsibility of their assets.

Quote from: Findingnemo on March 04, 2021, 01:55:57 PM

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But, why only Freewallet mentioned? Haven't you heard about Freewallet freezing users account? What if the price of cryptocurrencies decreased at the time. The thing is, both Freewallet and exchanges are all offering custodial services. In this regard, Freewallet is not a good example, to be able to have access to your coin anytime you want, you need to have a noncustodial wallet, and Freewallet is custodial and not a good example, users do not have the private key to the coins they are having there on their Freewallet account, and not your key not you coin. Such inconveniences can occur on any platform providing custodial services, be it wallets or exchanges.

Quote from: Charles-Tim on March 04, 2021, 03:22:35 PM

But, why only Freewallet mentioned? Haven't you heard about Freewallet freezing users account? What if the price of cryptocurrencies decreased at the time. The thing is, both Freewallet and exchanges are all offering custodial services. In this regard, Freewallet is not a good example, to be able to have access to your coin anytime you want, you need to have a noncustodial wallet, and Freewallet is custodial and not a good example, users do not have the private key to the coins thry are having there on their Freewallet account, and not your key not you coin. Such inconveniences can occur on any platform providing custodial services, be it wallets or exchanges.

Thing is, Cointelegraph didn't use Freewallet as an example out of the goodness of their heart but because Freewallet paid for the promotion, plan and simple. That's why they only mentioned Frewallet afterall and not the others. They would say the same thing for basically any other wallet that is willing to pay. In the end, that's what crypto news portals mainly consist of, paid articles.

We all know that Freewallet should be avoided, but I am not sure what exactly you mean when you said "wrongfully promoting"? I might have missed that, but did they say in the artcile that they are non-custodial?

Quote from: Rikafip on March 04, 2021, 03:26:41 PM

We all know that Freewallet should be avoided, but I am not sure what exactly you mean when you said "wrongfully promoting"? I might have missed that, but did they say in the artcile that they are non-custodial?

Because they are not as much different from exchanges by not giving users full control over their cryptocurrencies. There are a lot of inconveniences that can result from using custodial services. In this regard, the recommendable wallets are noncustodial and open source, even custodial wallets should not fit in not to talk of Freewallet that is custodial with freezing account reputation. But, like you have commented, they paid for it, but there are a lot of reasons we should not use such wallets. There are times custodial services do have issues, I believe Freewallet users will be able to testify to this.

The fact is even if free wallet decide to start giving users their private keys no one will trust them again, they have hurt too many people and I'm one of them, log into your account for months and after storing coins you suddenly can't log into your account anymore? There is nothing they can do as their rep is already ruined

Quote from: CryptoATM on March 04, 2021, 03:58:57 PM

As much as how ruined their reputation is for the Bitcoiners on various communities, unfortunately there's a huge amount of people out there that doesn't actively read and take part in crypto communities. A lot of people would just type in "bitcoin wallet" on the Google Play or iOS App Store and pick the ones close to the top of the list.

Paid promotion is a completely normal phenomenon in the world of so-called modern journalism that writes what they are paid for, regardless of whether something is completely legitimate or 100% scam. Anyone who has been on the forum for a while knows that this wallet has an extremely bad reputation and of course for a very good reason.

For all those who have some doubts, it is enough to look at the official Freewallet profile on the forum - it's not really a wallet, but an exchange with an insane KYC procedure.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=1177176

Look below the article and you can see a disclaimer:

Quote

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

I have looked at more of their articles and it seems like they do have paid promotions: the Freewallet article and other articles about random tokens seem to have the disclaimer while news about.. say binance do not have the disclaimer although there still is a product (service.. company.. whatever!) that they mentioned in it.

This is when you don't give a f* about the respect you've gotten from your followers and readers and you would rather just take money and help a scam be promoted around.

Quote from: Charles-Tim on March 04, 2021, 03:22:35 PM

Quote from: Findingnemo on March 04, 2021, 01:55:57 PM

<...>

Because its just an sponsored advertisement, so people who are going to trust because of an article from Cointelegraph or any other reputed sites still they need to make enough research. Myself found that Freewallet is kind of shady/scammy wallet but also there are people who recovered their funds after providing the KYC documents they wanted which means people started using the wallet without know what are their ToS.

The responsibility rests with the beginners who trust the first search result that appears on Google without verifying its authenticity.
Elon Musk tried to indicate that the wallet is bad, but I expect the opposite will happen because people are lazy.
The Google algorithm is another reason, because when you search for terms like Dogecoin, the first result that appears is this wallet.
That is if we ignore the paid articles.