Phone got stolen, lost all my coins

English Community Technical Support
#1

Hey,
So this Sunday my iPhone got stolen, first thing I did was to put in lost modus and if turned on again delete everything on device.
Yesterday however I received a sms that has been found but as soon as i tried to track it it didn’t appear in my devices anymore, few moments later I got an email saying that find my device has been disabled. Later on when I went to check my Yoroi wallet i saw that a transaction has been my made, all my coins were gone.
I already contacted yoroi support, waiting for an answer.
However following the address i could see that it has been sent to another address and then split in two.
I documented it all, sending screenshots to yoroi as well.

Is there anyway of seeing my coins again? It was quiet a big amount and I’m devastated at this moment, looking for any help I can get…

Thank you for reading my post!

#2

Hello,

I’m sorry to let you know but nothing can be done; you must report the incident to the police.
Your phone wasn’t protected by a password, fingerprint, etc? If yes, how it could be accessed? Maybe someone who know you?

Thx,

#3

It was protected by fingerprint, the phone itself and the wallet… I have no idea how that is even possible…

So the coins are gone for sure then?

What would the police be able to do?

#4

The police should try to find the person who stole your phone right?

unfortunately nothing can be done, ADA were already moved out of the wallet…

PS: but the phone had the possibility to be accessed with PIN right? Does anyone knows about your ADA?..anyway go to Police
you should have blocked it from the cloud immediately

Cheers,

#5

Yeah the phone did have the pin option besides fingerprint…

I had the phone on lost mode which blocks it the moment it’s turned on again, should have had it on delete everything on device…

Is there any kind of way to retrieve my coins back, or is it gone gone, like 1000% gone?..

Sorry for asking that, it’s just so frustrating as this was my long term investment which I was hoping to use to help finance building a house/buying an apartment…

#6

The fact that Find My Phone was disabled as soon as you followed the link in the SMS might indicate that it was a phishing SMS to get your credentials. Kasperskys have an article about this if you are interested: iPhone stolen? Here’s what not to do | Kaspersky official blog

It will not help you to get your funds back but it might help someone to avoid it in the future.

4 Likes
#7

This is indeed close to impossible unless the thieves are very sophisticated or Emurgo has royally fucked up the security of Yoroi. Somehow I have a hunch that the latter possibility is a tiny bit more likely. I am very, very sorry for your loss and really don’t know what to say.

For everybody else: By all means use a hardware wallet stored in a secure location.

1 Like
#8

Yes, but think:

  • they knew the pin to unlock the phone
  • they knew the pin to unlock the yoroi app
  • they knew the spending password for yoroi
  • they knew the icloud account…

Basically they knew everything …

#9

Wow That would make so much sense… I wish I would have thought of that… thank you for sharing! @Fanny

1 Like
#10

Yes that is a possibility but how can you be sure about that? A forensics device could have been used to circumvent or extract some or all of these secrets. Maybe some signing keys, Xprv or even the seed phrase was stored in RAM. There are so many possibilities that even the thought of entering my seed in a mobile wallet gives me goosebumps.

Yoroi itself is mostly Javascript, which means that much of what actually executes on the hardware is not even unter Emurgo’s control. Insofar I was probably wrong in suggesting that they could possibly be blamed for what happened. At the very least they cannot be blamed alone.

My point is that seed-based wallets on a computer and even more so on a mobile device are inherently insecure. We should not use them.

1 Like
#11

That’s why HW wallets were created

#12

And paper wallets. Doesn’t need a hi-tech solution.

1 Like
#13

Thank you guys for making me aware of so many things!
I will look into getting a Hardware wallet

My last question to you guys
So i had 13k coins, I originally invested 1.5k, now to get back to that amount would cost me about 11k…
I won’t be able to afford that anytime soon but i do want to continue to invest, I see high potential here
What would be the smartest way for me to proceed in regards of investing as the price of Ada is going up like crazy atm?