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submitted 9 months ago by brie@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

I used a sentence from the article as the title since I felt it represented the actual issue better, let me know if I should change it.

Essentially, Snap Store has basically no restrictions on publishing new applications, allowing for scammers to impersonate legitimate applications. In this case (and several times in the past) the target was a cryptocurrency wallet, resulting in ~$490,000 worth of bitcoin being stolen.

The "Safe" rating reminds me of this xkcd:

If someone steals my laptop while I'm logged in, they can read my email, take my money, and impersonate me to my friends, but at least they can't install drivers without my permission.

(For comparison, it seems being proprietary is an automatic unsafe rating for any application, which could be considered too extreme in the other direction.)

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[-] senseamidmadness@beehaw.org 12 points 9 months ago

Snap has always bothered me and this is another great reason why.

this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Technology

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