Topic: HOWTO: create a 100% secure wallet - page 71. (Read 276221 times)
Thank you for all the excellent information in this thread. This is useful information for new people interested in bitcoin as me.
Best way you be to just memorise if you can 
I assume you're talking about the passphrase, well that's not entirely adecuate, because id something were to happen to you, nobody is going to be able to take the money from your account, so you can write it down and put it in a safebox, where your family can access it and in case of any sudden death, they will be able to use the money.
Best way you be to just memorise if you can
Is it safe to backup my wallet on dropbox?
HELL NO! Well unless you encrypted it with a strong password. But Dropbox (i.e. their employees) can access your data. And depending on where they host their data, so can the particular 3rd party hosting / cloud storage company (maybe Amazon or whatever).Not saying these companies are untrustworthy, but you simply don't want to take this risk. Especially because IF your coins disappear, there's no way to proof it was them.
Wuala.com (an alternative to Dropbox) is safer because encryption occurs client side there.
Then again, you shouldn't have an unencrypted wallet on your PC anyway. Suppose someone breaks in and takes your PC. Or you lose your laptop or whatever. Simply do NOT mess around with your money.
The brainwallet concept is very ground braking and cool.
Hello, I got some questions that I would be thankful if someone would shed a light on it for me:
aiwk171 has mentioned on the OP that:
Here are my questions:
aiwk171 has mentioned on the OP that:
Quote
But how can I haz my money back?
Okay, for those of you who didn't guess it yet: Whenever you want to make a transaction from your savings-account to someplace else, get your wallet.dat out of the safe, boot up your liveCD (don't you dare using your regular OS after all this work, or I'll come beat you up personally) and do the reverse: Install bitcoin again, install the encryption-software if necessary and copy your wallet.dat where it belongs.
Okay, for those of you who didn't guess it yet: Whenever you want to make a transaction from your savings-account to someplace else, get your wallet.dat out of the safe, boot up your liveCD (don't you dare using your regular OS after all this work, or I'll come beat you up personally) and do the reverse: Install bitcoin again, install the encryption-software if necessary and copy your wallet.dat where it belongs.
Here are my questions:
- Does that mean that I have to wait for hours/days for the bitcoin application to be updated before I can check its balance or make some transaction?
- Can I just copy the contents of the bitcoin directory (.lock, blk0001.dat, blk0002.dat, blkindex.dat, db.log, debug.log, peers.dat) to the bitcoin directory of the Ubuntu live cd to make the update procedure faster?
I want a secure wallet
Thank you for this!
Thanks to the original author for this thread
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i would advice to backup the wallet also on usb key/sd card, it is safe, but dont make it necessarily obvious the thing you are uploading is your wallet. on the other hand, wallet without a password is completely useless and if your pw is complicated enough, it would take 1000 years to crack it, so..
Is it safe to backup my wallet on dropbox?
Thanks for the post, a very good read & solid info. Saved me some time on this task.
Wouldn't it be secure enough just to park your coins at a reputable exchange such as Mt Gox?
NO of course not!1. Mt Gox is not reputable at all (they have been hacked before). And having lotsa users or "being big" does NOT AT ALL automatically imply trustworthiness.
2. If they suddenly decide to shut down because they have enough funds and can retire, you're boned.
3. If one of their employees fucks up and causes a database crash or accidentally leaks some passwords or SQL credentials, you're boned.
4. If one of their employees turns out to be corrupt and disappears with your coins, you're boned.
5. When storing coins at Mt Gox, you don't own the private keys, and you have essentially no control over your coins whatsoever.
6. You're making yourself dependent on one random single foreign entity. You'd have to trust them completely, based on hardly anything.
One of the great things about Bitcoin is you don't need to trust anybody. You need to trust mathematical principles.
I store my private keys in an encrypted archive (with a password that I will always easily remember, yet is impossible for anyone to guess or brute force) and I stored this archive on several places online and offline.
It doesn't get much safer than that.
Wouldn't it be secure enough just to park your coins at a reputable exchange such as Mt Gox?
I also store an encrypted copy of my wallet in a Cloud. So in case you own systems fail in some way, the Cloud hopefully doesn't.
would you trust an online wallet with considerable amount of bitcoins?
Yes, as long as1) I can backup the private keys myself
2) it works with client side encryption (i.e. my password does not get transmitted to anywhere outside my PC, and without my password, nobody can access my private keys)
What I implemented so far:
Keep updated wallet on encrypted USB stick & and deleted wallet after used.
Simple.
Keep updated wallet on encrypted USB stick & and deleted wallet after used.
Simple.
Thank OP for such helpful thread.
For those OS X users out there. I recommend making a new disk image (DMG).
In the creation options simply specify the new image should be encrypted and password protected.
Everything else is a pice of cake.
For those OS X users out there. I recommend making a new disk image (DMG).
In the creation options simply specify the new image should be encrypted and password protected.
Everything else is a pice of cake.
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