How safe is it to store your bitcoins on a mobile phone?

[DoublerHunter]

If I backup the keys onto my phone's sdcard, don't other apps have temporary access to that file before I delete it? I'm using a Micromax phone and I'm concerned that the phone contains pre-installed malware.

Is it better to just move the money to a wallet on my PC?

It is more safe when you move your money to a wallet on your desktop. your phones SD card might corrupt and you will lose your private key.
try paper wallet, store it in a safe place like banks. or bury them.

[arwin100]

If I backup the keys onto my phone's sdcard, don't other apps have temporary access to that file before I delete it? I'm using a Micromax phone and I'm concerned that the phone contains pre-installed malware.

Is it better to just move the money to a wallet on my PC?

It is more safe when you move your money to a wallet on your desktop. your phones SD card might corrupt and you will lose your private key.
try paper wallet, store it in a safe place like banks. or bury them.

In our case majority of us in phillippines using web wallet that owned by a company, and they have wallet bitcoin app and were using it and i really can say its very safe because no reports that it is been hack by the hackers or someone breach their security, not mentioned thosr get victimized by phising, and thats why i can really safe to store your bitcoin in your cellphone,

[arseaboy]

If I backup the keys onto my phone's sdcard, don't other apps have temporary access to that file before I delete it? I'm using a Micromax phone and I'm concerned that the phone contains pre-installed malware.

Is it better to just move the money to a wallet on my PC?

It is more safe when you move your money to a wallet on your desktop. your phones SD card might corrupt and you will lose your private key.
try paper wallet, store it in a safe place like banks. or bury them.

well for OP it is not really recommended to save it from your cellphone because the risk that cp might be corrupted anytime and the stability of sd can't assure you that you can handled it properly, desktop wallet would be much safer or placing it in a paper wallet. you can rely more on it mate.

[pooya87]

if you have large amounts you should always use a safe and known way of storing your bitcoin in a cold storage, try not to innovate new ways that you are not completely familiar with. that is how you lose coins.

[Hazir]

General rule:

Use your mobile device as bitcoin storage only when you are using your bitcoin in your daily activities, your need quick access to your BTC or trade with it etc.
There is absolutely no need to use your phone as your wallet and storing all yours coins on it is very bad idea.

I guess in the future, when bitcoin adoption by merchants will be more developed and you will be able to buy some necessities for BTC etc.
Keeping coins on your phone will have more sense then, but for now it is rather pointless.

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

General rule:

Use your mobile device as bitcoin storage only when you are using your bitcoin in your daily activities, your need quick access to your BTC or trade with it etc.
There is absolutely no need to use your phone as your wallet and storing all yours coins on it is very bad idea.

I guess in the future, when bitcoin adoption by merchants will be more developed and you will be able to buy some necessities for BTC etc.
Keeping coins on your phone will have more sense then, but for now it is rather pointless.

Good rules to follow. Ledger is doing some interesting work with their Trustlets which may solve the problems of keeping your private keys secure on an Android phone. The beta is finished and you can download the Trustlet from the Play Store but will work only on specific Samsung phones.

[Genius Einstein]

Well you can have a vault on coinbase if you connect on another device such as a phone so i guess your bitcoins are pretty safe but then again one can never be sure. I think that phones are less safe than computers as it is harder to collect a computer than quickly snatching a phone.

[Quickseller]

First of all, I would suggest that you do not use an Android phone to store your bitcoin. Although it would probably be fairly safe to do so, it is much easier to jailbreak Android phones, which leads to more potential security issues. When you download an app on the Apple App store, you generally know that the app is not malicious, to the extent that you trust Apple, and the same can not be said with downloading Apps on an Android, as a fairly decent number of apps have made their way onto Android phones via distribution channels. I also believe that Apps on an iPhone are insulated from each-other while this is not always the case on an Android (I am not 100% sure on either of these).

I would suggest that you not store more bitcoin on your phone then you would normally carry around with you in your wallet and/or pocket. If your phone gets stolen from you then there is a fairly decent chance that all of the bitcoin stored in your phone will also get stolen. As mentioned a couple of times above, you will also want to backup your seed (or private keys, whichever applies) somewhere off your phone (and not in the cloud) so you do not end up loosing your bitcoin when you drop your phone in the toilet.

[Cyaren]

As Quickseller said, Android operating systems are fairly open source and can get rooted/jailbreaked. iPhones are a better option than Android in this particular sense, even though you're basically putting your BTC in the hands of the Apple company. And there are a lot of hacks/leaks originated from Apple.

Also your phone would be connected to internet most of the time, which makes it prone to hackers and attacks.

A much better idea would be a completely offline storage option, like paper wallets or hardware wallets. Paper wallets are probably the best.

[Herbert2020]

your mobile phone can easily be stolen, because it is something that you are carrying around with yourself. and if you want to keep it at home and use it as storage then again there are better method, why use a phone instead.
besides as long as it can connect to internet your coins are in danger. in fact IMO anything that is not cold storage is at risk.

[MyBTT]

If you are storing large amounts of Bitcoin, then I definitely recommend using a hardware wallet like a trezor or ledger wallet. If you don't want to spend money, then you could just a software wallet.

[Divinespark]

It's getting safer but I don't access any coins on mobile as a matter of principle. Nor do I store any private keys on mobile.

[stereotype]

Had some BTC in a Blockchain.info account linked to my phone via the app, for nearly 3 years. Had no problems.
But storing private keys of meaningful value on your phone, is a bad idea.

[yenxz]

If I backup the keys onto my phone's sdcard, don't other apps have temporary access to that file before I delete it? I'm using a Micromax phone and I'm concerned that the phone contains pre-installed malware.

Is it better to just move the money to a wallet on my PC?

i think its good for saving backup keys on smartphone SDcard,but its all depend on security in your phone,and you should make sure that you will keep your phone safe,not sstolen or maybe lost,it important thing you should consider.

[diodio5]

Its fine for small amounts needed for transactions but keep any large balances in cold storage or on a very well secured computer or mac

yeah maybe for a small amount can still be tolerated to store in a wallet phone. because you know the risk of storing bitcoin wallet phones are quite large. there may be a friend who intends evil to borrow your phone and steal it
or it could have lost your cell.

[sishendaoye]

I would not do it because allot can happen with your phone. You can lose your phone or it can break so I suggest that you do not store any of your coins on your phone.

[jacktheking]

Just sharing my experience here.

I have been using Mycelium Android wallet since October 2014 and have never encounter any lost coins before. I uses a vanity address that was generated on my computer (not really). I then transferred the private key to my Android smartphone. So far no one have access to my vanity address yet. .

[DimensionZ]

It's not safe to store the bulk of your Bitcoins on a mobile device like your phone that is constantly connected to the Internet. And there is a chance that you may lose it somewhere or it could get stolen and if you have made a backup of your private keys or mnemonic words in the phone's memory or on the microsd card you are basically putting the key to your money in the hands of strangers. I would recommend printing out a paper wallet and use that as a cold storage for your main Bitcoin stash.

[eternalgloom]

I only keep small amounts on Mycelium and I have very few apps installed, just some apps like Firefox and VLC, but I think they're pretty safe.
Don't think it would be wise to keep coins on a phone ordered from certain Chinese manufacturers and malware can also come from apps installed from the Play Store.

[vapourminer]

I dont really trust any phone or pc enough for longish term storage of btc, even though I have got away with just that in the past.

now I keep a little on my phone for spending using mycelium, but paper wallets and trezor are the go to solutions for main storage needs.

BTW rooted phones would be far less secure than stock, all else being equal.