Topic: How much safe Electrum 2FA is? (Read 304 times)

Electrum is a non-custodial wallet where you get a private key when you create an account. Which cannot be memorized or matched in any way. So if you don't submit your private key to any phishing site. Or the device on which you keep your private key is not hacked. Or if you write down your private key in a diary or print your private key from a computer and leave it somewhere if it is not stolen. Then no one can access your wallet. So in this case you can stay below if you can keep your private key safely. Then there is no chance of your crypto being hacked from there. Here you can definitely hold crypto for a long time

Electrum wallet 2FA is safe but there are things you should know....

Unauthorized access to your device is where 2FA authentication comes in, no one will able to get into your wallet as they will need the 2FA code to get in but that's it, 2FA authentication has no capacity to safeguard your recovery seed, do not think that you can safe your recovery seed somewhere online or in your email and nothing will happen because you are using 2FA, if I have access to your recovery seed I will still be able to move all your funds out of your wallet while your 2FA is active.

This makes 2FA authentication less interesting to me, if you don't want to get hacked keep your recovery seed offline, Electrum wallet is a very good one but still the user must protect it's recovery seed privately, keep it off the places where people can easily see it, if you are not living alone you should still have your private space, I carved mine on a stainless steel in the shape of a master card and keep it in a locker.

Yes, it is one of the ideal desktop wallets that's focused in Bitcoin if you don't have other means of storing your Bitcoin through a hardware wallet or any of a kind. There's no problem if you do that and you can basically treat it as your air gap wallet if you ever had a device like a laptop that you're not going to use and just simply disconnect it entirely from the internet.

Everyone has the risk of being hacked if we're not careful to how we browse on the web. Remember that, depends on the wallet you use. If you downloaded the wrong wallet and it's owned by the hackers that copied an official wallet then you're likely to get hack and your funds will be gone. But if you have downloaded the official wallet, the fate of yours being hacked depend on your browsing activity.

Adding to this, Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous, it's just pseudo-anonymous so the user who wants complete anonymity has to choose privacy coins like Monero. In the Bitcoin network, we can attain the utmost privacy by running our own node via the Tor network and conjoining UTXOs to reduce traceability.

You must be careful with what you write.

I only know about wallets which give you option to connect to Tor in order to protect your privacy. There is no wallet called as Tor wallet if I am not missing basic about Bitcoin wallet softwares.

Tor connection only helps you to protect your privacy but Bitcoin wallet and transaction have two main things you have to consider: privacy and anonymity. Privacy is how you connect your wallet to nodes and broadcast your transactions. Anonymity is how you use your Bitcoin UTXOs, inputs and outputs to get as most anonymity as possible.

This secure mechanism makes Electrum a necessary offline version, allowing it to be used to store seeds and make transactions. If you want to use both so that you can protect the privacy of your Internet and Bitcoin transactions, a Tor wallet or a Bitcoin node on the Tor network. Connecting can be a good way. It can help you to increase your privacy and stay anonymous on internet connection.

No personal information needed to use Electrum wallet.

It's non custodial wallet and you can simply download the wallet, verify it and turn of the Internet connection before creating your wallet to use. I mean creating your wallet offline or best on an airgap device!

Airgap is best if you can have a device for this task: a clean device, secure OS and offline.

How to set up a Bitcoin air-gap computer?

Electrum wallet is an SPV wallet and despite there's a need for personal information if using the wallet. Without the use of Tor and operating the wallet using self Electrum server the transaction sender's IP address will be exposed that's why the use of Tor and operating own server on Electrum is important when privacy is a concern.
About hacking, the OP only needs to verify the wallet and prevent human error when using the wallet.

Electrum is a non-custodial wallet, so there is obviously nothing like kyc, but you can lose information about yourself even without submitting kyc, for instance, you have to run your own node or electrum server, if not your ip and Bitcoin addresses can be seen by the server that your wallet connects to, and so that information about you will be known to that node and you lose privacy.
The seed phrase in your electrum wallet would only be offline if you use the electrum software in an air-gapped device, and that might be a little bit technical for the OP to pull off, for offline storage, a hardware wallet might be an easier option for newcomers.

Op you are asking about privacy and hacking and  talking at the same time and these two are connected to each other. So let me give my own opinion on each. If you are concerned about your privacy and do not want to be known electrum is best for you because electrum wallet does not ask you for yours personal information. If you use Electrum your information and your privacy will not be changed and people will not know about yours and on the other hand, hacking is somewhat different from privacy. In privacy, you keep your info and no one will find out but in hacking everything will be in front of a hacker and they can easily find it. your seed through your wallet or PC. So I suggested the software wallet which is the safest one because in this software only your seed will be saved offline and make sure that your PC will never connect to the internet. If you are willing to follow my instructions you need to do some more research about it.

With Electrum wallet, you can use the seed to import and recover your wallet. If you no longer want to use 2FA feature, no longer want to pay extra fee to TrustedCoin, you can import the wallet seed, choose no "Wallet with 2 factor authentication", "I already have a seed", Restore, and you will get a same wallet. It's only does not have 2FA.

Recovering your 2FA wallet https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/2fa.html

How? Explain better.

Right from time, desktop Electrum has been better than mobile Electrum. But mobile Electrum is neither bad.

Unstoppable wallet does not support replace-by-fee, cancel transaction and child-pay-for-parent and I can not recommend bitcoin user to use it, but it is a good altcoin wallet because it is open source but not support many altcoins. Unstoppable wallet does not support signing and verifying of bitcoin message, airgapped wallet, multisig, can not be used with external hardware wallets like hardware wallets et cetera.

The whole concept of Electrum wallet was to provide a non custodial wallet. It is still open source and I believe it will remain in the same manner. What made it look bad was when they introduced a mobile wallet.

In the beginning it looked good, while you still we're able to do what with the wallet on a mobile instrument as it was with on a desktop. After their latest release they are now one of the worst wallet for some one using a Bitcoin wallet.

In the meantime there have wallet, that came out with a lot of features. For me the unstoppable wallet is good and the best part is that you can use it for multiple crypto
 

2-factor authentication will only help with giving you some level of protection against unauthorised access to your wallet.

Secondly, If you want to protect your privacy from prying eyes and the government in this case, I would advise using a mixer like Sinbad or other recommendable mixers to protect your identity and mask your crypto footprint from being tracked.


It depends on how you use the wallet, is the private key will stored, are you keeping the Pvt key on these password managers, how easy is it for other users to get access to your computer, is your pc shared... honestly the safety of your coins are as good as the safeguards you put in as a user, good luck.

With using TOR connection, you can protect your anonymity as you hide your IP address, but you may still harm your privacy.

To protect your privacy, you need to run your own server. With running your own server, you no longer rely on any third party for getting data from the blockchain and broadcasting transactions.
If you don't run your own server, you have to connect to the servers. The server you connect to can know all the addresses are owned by the same person.

I will suggest that you use electrum with Tor this will gives you the level of protection you needed to have with the use of electrum wallet, the use of electrum 2FA is not tht bad as well, you make use of these to get more of security to your wallet, but using Tor will guarantee your privacy from any third party interference, the wallet being a multisig will serve more better in this capacity.

The best option is to manage a multi-signature wallet using Sparrow and with three signatures, one of which is Passport, and keep the seeds in a safe place far from your place of residence, and with a trusted third party, for example, your summer home or in another country. The latter is the Passport wallet, and thus reduces the possibility of your coins being accessed and you can read Explanation of how to do this here ---> https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/tutorial-passport-sparrow-multisig-wallet-5468930

You can use Electrum, but Sparrow is better at dealing with hardware wallets and managing them through TOR.
Electrum 2FA is good, but for privacy reasons, and since you focused on it, it is not the best option.

Having a 2FA in your Electrum wallet is safe but take note of their privacy policy because they do collecting data from your wallet including your email and IPs.

Read the privacy policy here https://trustedcoin.com/#/privacy

So if you concern about your privacy and don't want to use 3rd party I suggest don't use 2FA instead create an offline/cold storage wallet with Electrum and make sure to enable extended seed.

You can do so hide your IP address, but note that even if you use TOR connection, the server you connect to can know that all your addresses are owned by the same person. You can run your own server, so that you don't have connect to other's servers.

Electrum is open-source, the code has been reviewed by many people and no vulnerability has been discovered, but note that any online device is always prone to hacking.


Electrum 2FA wallet is actually a 2 of 3 multi-signature wallet. One of the master private keys is owned by trustedcoin and you have to pay extra fee, so that they sign your transaction.

In electrum 2FA wallet, you have a seed phrase which can generate 2 of master private keys and all three master public keys. Note that any one who has access to the seed phrase has all required keys for making a transaction. So, it's required that the seed phrase is kept offline and you use a secure device for generating your wallet. If your device has been compromised and you use that for generating your 2FA wallet, you don't increase your security.

First thing I deduce from your post is that you are looking for privacy or total anonymity, VPN or TOR could provide a temporary solution but the best thing is to actually run your own node so you don’t get to connect to just any public serve which are some what untrusted. Electrum is an SPV wallet and you are connected to public server although you can choose to have your own electrum server.

The issue of hack is another matter that’s different from privacy, no wallet is tamper proof against hack it is just how you decide to run that wallet. That is why the best thing is always to have a self custodian wallet which is also open source and always offline. Hardware wallets fits into the category of an offline wallet but not all are open source. So you can make your own offline wallet by using electrum on airgapped devices and storing the keys of seed phrase offline.

The 2FA wallet still adds another layer of security but in term of security breach it seems almost the same if the wallet used is an online wallet or the 2FA authenticator is stored one the same device as the wallet software. Electrum. If the hacker gets hold of the seed phrase they can still get access to the funds on the wallet without the 2FA code.

Another layer of security you can to your seed phrase is a passphrase which without it you can’t recover that wallet

For privacy, it is better you run your own node, like Bitcoin Core. Or you can run you own Electrum server.

For anonymity, use Electrum with Tor.

For Electrum 2FA, read these:

https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/2fa.html
https://api.trustedcoin.com/#/faq
https://api.trustedcoin.com/#/faq#fees

Know that it is 2-of-3 multisig.

Electrum 2FA is safe. Make sure your 2FA app is not on the same app with your wallet.

If you can go for Electrum multisig, it is also safe if you set it up securely and also if you do the backup the way you supposed to do it.
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/multisig.html
https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-multisig-wallet/#:~:text=Select%20Multi%2Dsignature%20as%20the,required%20to%20spend%20from%20it.

Electrum cold storage is also good
https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

You can have other choices like Multisig wallet or cold storage with Electrum wallet.

With 2FA, you will use a third party service (TrustedCoin) for it, and you will have to pay extra fee for it. If you don't want to pay extra fee because of 2FA, you can choose either Multisig wallet or cold storage wallet with Electrum.

Two guides for you
Creating a multisig wallet
Creating a cold storage wallet

Verify your wallet!
[GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum

About 2FA with Electrum.
Two Factor Authentication
You will be safe if you verify the wallet first and your device is clean or air gap (does not connect to Internet).

Multisig or cold storage wallet can help your coins safer.

I was thinking of doing transaction of btc thru electrum and can collect money by third party which may makes government unrecognizable who is handling behind it. Currently I'm using this forum by self created multiple VPns. What you recommend me to deal with that? Should I use with the help of TOr (basically it runs?) Is electrum is safe for long term storing? Can I get hacked ?