Hardware portfolios, like the Ledger Nano S, are selling like hotcakes on the famous e-commerce platforms. They are made to guarantee flawless security. And yet, a man was stolen all his cryptos after buying his on Ebay. Explanations.
The history of Ledger bought on eBay
For those who do not know yet, the Ledger Nano S a small gadget in the shape of a USB key that is used to secure its digital wallet, provided to configure it even. If not, that is, if you take this task away from someone else or the device has been used by another person before you (a used Ledger), you may have surprises.
This is exactly what happened to a user of Reddit "moodyrocket" who took the risk of buying a Ledger Nano S on eBay, and which was emptied his digital wallet shortly thereafter by the seller.
The latter delivered with the device a "fake" document on which was a scratch part hiding "the recovery seed". However, the Ledger does not work like this, since the seed must be generated randomly via the device at the first use, and the seed on the document is not at all the one that has been assigned by the manufacturer. Thanks to this seed he knows of course, the scammer was able to transfer on its own account all the LTC, XRP and other stored currencies of the victim, for a total of 30 000 dollars.
The victim tells his misadventure on Reddit
Having not bothered to reset his Ledger Nano S to generate a new seed, moodyrocket has been stolen all his assets and explains himself on Reddit.
He told :
"I have not used my Ledger for a week, today I decide to check the value of my XRP, Litecoin and Dash. And I found that everything was at zero, everything had been transferred yesterday at about the same time at 7:30. I do not know how this is possible because I did not touch my Ledger for a week. "
The "poor" man can not do anything else besides complaining on social networks, because its digital currencies will surely be returned to him, except miracle of course. For its part, the company Ledger simply urged the victim to bring the case to sue the seller.
The only good thing about this story is that it will serve as a warning to anyone wishing to buy a hardware wallet of cryptocurrency on eBay. It is not said that all sellers are scammers, but that it is necessary to double vigilance not to be stripped of his digital wallet.
As for eBay, think carefully before paying for your purchases in bitcoins and other digital currencies, at least until the platform officially adopts cryptocurrency.