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COBO vs Trezor: Not all TOS created equal.

TermsOfService.jpg

Like most people, I simply blindly agree to any terms of service that I'm presented with when I want to use a product. The chance that we will violate the terms of service on accident and that ends up being a problem for us is less than 1%, so why would we waste any time trying to read that legal jargon?

However, recently it's starting to become more and more important to read the terms & conditions for me personally. I still can't get over this whole hardware wallet situation (COBO & Trezor). COBO blatantly mines every bit of information they can from their users and they aren't shy about it. Just look what I found:

t1.png

https://webview.cobo.com/internal/des/pp

Seriously?

Are they shitting us? They collect our cryptographic keys? I have to assume they simply mean the public keys, but it doesn't say that. If you were to assume this was a legal document that would be interpreted as all keys, public and private. Seeing as this is their official Privacy Policy, how could you not interpret it this way? Let's hope this is just an oversight, because if not then their entire product is completely compromised and pointless.

Other than that they also will snipe your Social Security Number and your Driver's license number if you let them. They are seriously out of control, and it becomes blatantly obvious why they are encrypting the QR codes generated by the Vault. I find this extremely disappointing.

What about Trezor?

This blatant invasion of privacy inspired me to check out the Trezor TOS. It was surprisingly short and to the point.

https://trezor.io/static/pdf/tos.pdf

t2.png

That's it!

That is Trezor's entire TOS. I was actually amazed by that, as it was the smallest one I've ever seen by a huge margin.

But what does it say?

Ah, well that's the best part. It basically says "don't be an idiot". It explains what all of us should already know. Trezor is not responsible for you losing your money.

No bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies or any private information such as transaction comment or address labels are stored by SatoshiLabs and SatoshiLabs is not in any control of such information as we simply provide an interface to access them.

Wow

That's like the first time I've ever read anything anything remotely like that in a TOS ever. They basically waive all responsibility by not collecting any information whatsoever. Pretty amazing honestly.

Conclusion

I was a bit disillusioned by my whole experience with buying these two hardware wallets, but Trezor's TOS makes me feel a lot better. We still have to trust that their firmware is solid and that they will do what they say, but at least what they are saying isn't completely ridiculous like COBO LLC.

Cheers!


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COBO vs Trezor: Not all TOS created equal. was published on and last updated on 17 Jun 2020.