Why Smartphone Wallets Are Insecure, And How to Protect Your Bitcoin

From the theft of $230,000 from ShapeShift to the DAO hack, large amounts of cryptocurrency can be stolen through security breaches if the owner does not take the necessary safety precautions.
Of particular vulnerability are mobile devices, which can be subject to a host of attacks through apps that are spyware in disguise. CoinTelegraph interviewed Gary Miliefsky, CEO of cyber-security firm SnoopWall, about the security risks facing mobile device Bitcoin wallet users.
CoinTelegraph: Bitcoin smartphone wallets: how secure are they?
Gary Miliefsky: Smartphone wallets are completely insecure. There have been over 500 million downloads of emoji keyboards: keyloggers, spyware disguised as friendly emoticon keyboards. When you startup your smartphone wallet the first time, you may enter bitcoin info or add username/password credentials. These are shipped off to criminal servers remotely because of this kind of keyboard malware.
Many of these QR code and barcode scanners come from legitimate sources like eBay, Zxing, Scan Inc, and DroidLa. Despite this, SnoopWall still deems many of them voluntary creepware. The reason for this is that many have intrusive permissions that allow them to geolocate you, read your contacts, access USB storage, read your call log, make phone calls, and even record audio. Most of these permissions are legitimate, as most of these apps allow the user to generate information like phone numbers, contacts, and locations as scan-able QR codes.

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2016-06-30.