There are numerous ways to keep your crypto investments. Among these options you may choose desktop or mobile wallets. Among these kinds of wallets you may find plenty of options. When I needed such a wallet, I’ve chose Exodus. I’ve done some research regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the wallets available for desktop. Based on such a comparison among crypto wallets for desktop I choose to put my coins into Exodus.
Actually I needed such a wallet in order to withdraw my crypto from those several faucets that I’ve used (some of them I’m still using). After the market dumped at the end of May 2021, I’ve started to use daily Faucet Crypto and to withdraw quite frequent TRON into Exodus wallet. The price was very low at that time and the ratio was fairly good. Since the price was very low, I wasn’t interested to sell or to move the TRON that I had in EXODUS into another exchange where I had more TRON coins.
After the market has recovered, at the beginning of September, I was interested to see my portfolio on Exodus wallet. I was surprised to observe that the amount estimated is USD was lower than the last time when I’ve checked the wallet. While scrolling into my assets I’ve received an update message showing that I’ve sent TRON from my Exodus wallet. I was sure I didn’t take such an action, since my idea was just to earn TRON from faucets and hold it into the wallet for long.
Going into the TRON portfolio, I’ve noticed that the entire amount has been sent a few weeks ago. Who sent that TRON and where??? Well, I had now the opportunity to use one of the advantages provided by the blockchains, namely transparency for all the transactions. Accordingly, I’ve followed the link for the transactions on blockchain and I saw that my TRX were sent into a Poloniex account. At that moment I realized that most probably I was a victim of a phishing attack, or a malware attack.
In order to verify if there is any possibility to recover the TRON, I’ve contacted Exodus support. Their answer was very prompt and they asked me to send them some details regarding the transaction showed into the wallet. After exchanging several e-mails with Exodus team, they suggested me to scan my device using a malware software, since very probably I was stolen. After running malware software I found out that my device was infected with malware software or a spyware that has stolen TRON. That software was installed into drive C:, in the Program Data Folder, but as a hidden file. So I could find it only when I’ve checked to see hidden files on my computer. This malware or spyware software is able to attack various crypto wallets for desktop: Exodus, Atomic, Coinomi, Binance, ElectronCash, ElectrumLTC, Electrum or MultiDoge.
I was lucky that I didn’t use other desktop wallet and it was interesting that only TRON was missing from my Exodus wallet, even if I had other coins there. Of course, after that I’ve transferred those coins into a safe place (hopefully it is trustworthy). Another interesting thing to mention is that all the transactions into the wallet where my TRON arrived were based on TRON blockchain, since the transactions involved TRON and BTT.
Even if I had installed anti-virus software, seems that it wasn’t enough. Moreover, another mistake that I’ve made was to keep the recovery phrase on my computer. Most probably the spyware or malware software was obtained after using some faucets, since many links were seen as risky by the anti-virus software. Accordingly, I’ve stopped using those faucets and I’ve “clean” my device of all possible malware software.
Despite that fact that this event made me realize how easy you can lose crypto due to the online attacks, I’ve learned important lessons about how to avoid risky approaches while using crypto faucets and crypto wallets for desktop. I was lucky that the amount of TRON lost wasn’t too much, but if TRON will reach in the future a value close to ETH for example, then for sure I will remember even this small amount lost J.
To conclude, in order to keep your desktop wallets safe it is very important to use reliable anti-virus software, to keep your credentials and your recovery phrases on paper and never on your device, but also to avoid using or accessing untrustworthy websites or links, even more while using crypto faucets. These are the lessons that I’ve learned from this experience while I’ve lost some TRON from Exodus wallet.
