Bitcoin stolen from coinbase

[adeojo]

I had my coins stolen from coinbase. support has not been very helpful. Has anyone had similar experience ?

[Malexo]

pretty sure lots of people have had this experience.  i keep exactly 0 coiins on any e-wallet/exchange these days.

post this in the scam forum.

[Patel]

Offline laptop, truecrypt, and txt files do wonders for secure bitcoin storage.

[jonanon]

After all the horror stories why are people still keeping coins stored in unsecured places?

[dlevine01]

Did you enable two factor auth?  If not, why haven't you done it? 

[g35fan]

Did you enable two factor auth?  If not, why haven't you done it? 

Yea exactly what I was gonna ask. Only reason I keep any coins in coinbase is because of the two factor.

[adeojo]

I have 2FA auth ever since account was set up. PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR COINS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE IT GETS STOLEN

[BTCisthefuture]

I have 2FA auth ever since account was set up. PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR COINS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE IT GETS STOLEN

Please provide more information.   Creating a new account and coming on here to talk negatively about random bit coin service seems like a common trend these days , maybe trolls, maybe competitor, maybe valid complaints.

But please give more information on how this could have happened and people on here can provide future advice for you or if it was a probably with coinbase people will know to be more careful.  Typically a theft like this is going to be a user error, not a problem with coinbase itself.

[adeojo]

I created my account about 2 weeks ago and instantly enabled 2FA. so far I made 3 purchases and two transfers. All was ok.
Then yesterday morning, I logged into my account and to may shock my coins have been stolen, at the same time, the thief also bought two lots of coins,
one of the purchase was flagged as fraudulent by coinbase and cancelled, the other is still in pending status. I tried/still trying frantically to get coinbase to cancel the other pending transaction. As for the lost coins, I'm still trying to get them to refund. This is definitely on their side. There is no phone nos to call and no one is calling me back, why is that ?
I have used traditional banks/credit card online banking for years with no 2FA auth, a cent never went missing. Coinbase that prides itself as secure, this happened in less than 2 weeks.
I strongly urge you if you have an account with them, please move your coins and tell others.

[sssubito]

Did you use strong and unique password for your coinbase account and associated email account? (Unique means: never ever used for another account!)

Are you sure the computers from which you had access to coinbase are not compromised with some malware/keyloggers/whatever malicous?

Did you ever have access to your coinbase account in an unsecure network, e.g. public (W)LAN?

Did you access your coinbase account with your smartphone? Do you know all your apps on your smartphone?

Disclaimer:
I don't know coinbase, so still I can't see who is to blame here or how you actually lost your bitcoins.


How do you know who is the thief, provide more details on this!

[BTCisthefuture]

I created my account about 2 weeks ago and instantly enabled 2FA. so far I made 3 purchases and two transfers. All was ok.
Then yesterday morning, I logged into my account and to may shock my coins have been stolen, at the same time, the thief also bought two lots of coins,
one of the purchase was flagged as fraudulent by coinbase and cancelled, the other is still in pending status. I tried/still trying frantically to get coinbase to cancel the other pending transaction. As for the lost coins, I'm still trying to get them to refund. This is definitely on their side. There is no phone nos to call and no one is calling me back, why is that ?
I have used traditional banks/credit card online banking for years with no 2FA auth, a cent never went missing. Coinbase that prides itself as secure, this happened in less than 2 weeks.
I strongly urge you if you have an account with them, please move your coins and tell others.

Did you receive a sms or call on your phone for the transaction in question ?  If not contact your phone provider and they can provide you with all txt/calls received for a certain time frame.  If there was no sms or call ever placed to your phone then you can show this to coinbase and that should be enough evidence that something went wrong.

Do you use the coinbase app on your phone.... if you do it could be that your phone has malware/viruses.

What was the bitcoin address your coins were sent to ??

They have an email form here...looking at the code you can figure out their email address....  http://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/emails/new

A quick google search also will bring up contact info for their ceo or other execs, as well as the address for their office in san francisco if you need to reach out to them further.


edit:  Ultimately getting phone logs from your phone provider would get this solved most likely if it shows no sms/call was ever placed to your phone for 2fa.  Also worth asking your phone provider if anyone has made any changes to your account recently.

[Mr. Socko]

as soon as I get my 2D barcode scanner I'm going full on random 32-64 digit passwords on all accounts, stored in some 2D code format, laminated and stored in my safe deposit box. Only the master password to the "lastpass" program will be stored in my (physical leather in my pocket) wallet, and I'll use lastpass all the time unless I lose my wallet (never happened in my life yet) , in which case I'll retrieve the backup and change the password...  but even all this is potentially no good if you have a trojan or keylogger installed. Make sure to have a good 63 character password protecting your WPA2 secured network as well.  

here:

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

[stormbono]

Thats the only thing that i do not like about bitcoins..

Paper wallets.. is that the most secure way?

[adeojo]

Thank you all. As explained earlier I have a strong pw 2fa auth and use same machine
that I use for all my bank transactions( I have never lost a penny at the bank)
In a space of one minute there were three ransactions on my account
one was flagged as fraudulent (by coinbase). One is still pending and the coins are still
missing
Clearly it is suspect that the transactions that happened within that minute are also
Fraudulent. All I assure you this is coinbase issue. Please do not keep your coins with them
Since this happened I have come accross other posts that shows problems with coin base.
I have tried to contact them- no lock. I have left my phone nos with them no one is calling me back
What are they hiding? If any one knows how I canreach them please post.

[cr1776]

I have had friends buy a few coins through coinbase and never had an issue - I did show them how to create a paper wallet and move them immediately to cold storage so that nothing is stored there.  As the saying goes, if you don't have the private keys, then you don't own the coins.  Just like at a regular bank, your money is only a bookkeeping entry until you are holding it.

[Mr. Socko]

Thank you all. As explained earlier I have a strong pw 2fa auth and use same machine
that I use for all my bank transactions( I have never lost a penny at the bank)
In a space of one minute there were three ransactions on my account
one was flagged as fraudulent (by coinbase). One is still pending and the coins are still
missing
Clearly it is suspect that the transactions that happened within that minute are also
Fraudulent. All I assure you this is coinbase issue. Please do not keep your coins with them
Since this happened I have come accross other posts that shows problems with coin base.
I have tried to contact them- no lock. I have left my phone nos with them no one is calling me back
What are they hiding? If any one knows how I canreach them please post.

well thanks for the warning regardless. I added by bank account but did not yet verify the account with their 2 small transactions so I'll give everything a good look over before I decide anything.

I have had friends buy a few coins through coinbase and never had an issue - I did show them how to create a paper wallet and move them immediately to cold storage so that nothing is stored there.  As the saying goes, if you don't have the private keys, then you don't own the coins.  Just like at a regular bank, your money is only a bookkeeping entry until you are holding it.

that is a unique feature of bitcoin. It would be interesting if there was a way to 'back up' a bank account balance independently from the bank's control but I suppose the FDIC insurance wouldn't apply then. I don't think anything will happen that will cause people to lose their money outside of a hyper-inflationary explosion in which any number of investment vehicles including bitcoin could be handy. Still I love the paper wallet idea.. wealth in the palm of my hand, good as cash, yet able to back it up unlike cash.

[cr1776]

Thank you all. As explained earlier I have a strong pw 2fa auth and use same machine
that I use for all my bank transactions( I have never lost a penny at the bank)
In a space of one minute there were three ransactions on my account
one was flagged as fraudulent (by coinbase). One is still pending and the coins are still
missing
Clearly it is suspect that the transactions that happened within that minute are also
Fraudulent. All I assure you this is coinbase issue. Please do not keep your coins with them
Since this happened I have come accross other posts that shows problems with coin base.
I have tried to contact them- no lock. I have left my phone nos with them no one is calling me back
What are they hiding? If any one knows how I canreach them please post.

well thanks for the warning regardless. I added by bank account but did not yet verify the account with their 2 small transactions so I'll give everything a good look over before I decide anything.

I have had friends buy a few coins through coinbase and never had an issue - I did show them how to create a paper wallet and move them immediately to cold storage so that nothing is stored there.  As the saying goes, if you don't have the private keys, then you don't own the coins.  Just like at a regular bank, your money is only a bookkeeping entry until you are holding it.

that is a unique feature of bitcoin. It would be interesting if there was a way to 'back up' a bank account balance independently from the bank's control but I suppose the FDIC insurance wouldn't apply then. I don't think anything will happen that will cause people to lose their money outside of a hyper-inflationary explosion in which any number of investment vehicles including bitcoin could be handy. Still I love the paper wallet idea.. wealth in the palm of my hand, good as cash, yet able to back it up unlike cash.

I agree about if a hyper-inflationary explosion occurred a variety of assets would be useful.  Paper wallets are good if properly protected or encrypted.

Anyway, if you had asked the people of Cyprus in January 2013 if their money in their banks was safe, they probably would have given a similar answer regarding the only risk being hyper-inflation.  The risks may not be high, but it is there.

Check this article from PBS (notably, pretty government friendly) on Jan 30, 2014 about a Harvard Economics professor who withdrew all his money from Bank of America:

Is your money safe at the bank? An economist says ‘no’ and withdraws his
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-your-money-safe-at-the-bank-an-economist-says-no-and-withdraws-his/

[BitcoinEXpress]

I have 2FA auth ever since account was set up. PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR COINS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE IT GETS STOLEN

A three post newbie account created today has zero credibility especially since you provide no details.

If your coins got stolen from Coinbase, it is due to your mistake, not theirs.


~BCX~

[Rub3n]

Has anyone had similar experience ?

No.
Sorry to hear tho, but what happened on the support side?

[Cheeseater]

I had the same thing happen to me last month and eventually realized it was my fault. I had created my account and purchased one coin to use for a group buy. When I received the notification from coinbase that it was available I went to the site and logged in, submitted the 2FA code and nothing happened. When I finally logged in I watched as my coin went off to Russia. Long story short, checked my browser history and realized I was phished, Coinbaise.com. I clicked on a Bing ad and never looked at the URL entered my password and 2FA and kissed my coin goodbye.
There is a way to look at who has accessed your account add "activites" after you log in and you can see other log ins. Live and learn.