Posted December 15, 2017 | WD: by Gary Murphy |
Mobile Wallets: Score 3.5
Mobile wallets are some of the most convenient wallets in the crypto space but beware. While using a mobile wallet is convenient they frankly make me a little nervous because they are very vulnerable due to the nature of the device3. I believe them to be risky much like an online hot wallet is or should I say even more risky than a online hot wallet. Just like your computer your phone is open to malware, keyloggers, and viruses Only in a special situation would I use one of these mobile wallets. I would not load more than a couple of hundred dollars at a time on a mobile phone and that only for conveyance while possibly traveling in a foreign country.
In my last blog I discussed the Online or Hot Wallets. I did not go into Mobile Wallets very deep then but mobile wallets are Hot Wallets because they are online and on cellular networks too. This duel network thing makes it even risker to use a mobile devise as a wallet. As a matter of fact, I think they are about 10 times hotter than a simple online wallet. One reason for that is most of us can hardly make simple function changes on our phones without a teenager. So, if we are in charge of our own security in the Crypto space then we are in trouble.
A study done by High-Tech Bridge who studied phones with Google Play apps having high downloads of up to 100k, 93 percent had at least three medium risk vulnerabilities. With this record, it’s easy to see that most mobile cryptocurrency wallet apps employ poor security opening you up to hackers. We are constantly on the move using different hot spots and WIFI connections in public places. This alone creates a big risk to getting hacked.
Additionally, we get hundreds of notifications each week asking us to visit web sites we don’t know anything about and if not notified we’d never visit them. Facebook requests from people we don’t know wanting us to connect. This social media thing is getting out of hand and all of this continues to complicate our ability to keep our information confidential and safe. Why would you want to put any Banking or Cryptocurrency wallet on a phone? This is insane and if I were you and I had a wallet app on my phone I would remove it.
