Test writing mistakes: please write down these private keys for me - page 2.

PrimeNumber7

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Quote from: NeuroticFish on September 30, 2021, 06:33:46 AM

* 1 - l - I can be easily confused
* one can easily type small cap instead of capital or the opposite (more chances, but not limited to those where the small cap and the capital letter is written in the same way)
* v and w can easily be written incorrect
* 5 and S
* 9 and g

You can solve all of these issues by coming up with a system that indicates if a character is a number, an upper case letter, or a lower case letter.

For example, you could underline every upper case letter, and overline every number (those without an underline, nor an overline would be a lower case letter by process of elimination).

You can always check to ensure you wrote down a private key correctly by typing the private key after you write it down. If the key matches, you know the private key was written correctly, and if it doesn't match, you can look to see if the error was a reading or writing mistake and make the appropriate correction.

The problem IMO with writing down a private key is that people's handwriting will generally change over time, and something you can easily read today may be illegible in several years.

Pmalek

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Quote from: LoyceV on September 30, 2021, 07:14:29 AM

Those aren't much of a problem because 0, O, I, and l are excluded.

Sure, they are but someone new to Bitcoin wouldn't know that, and those are the people who mostly make these mistakes. Even someone familiar with the technology could overlook that and forget which letters can't be part of the private key. If you entered those characters into a wallet such as Electrum, it wouldn't allow you to proceed with the recovery, but you wouldn't know why exactly.

vjudeu

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Quote

Alternatively i would convert the private key to HEX/decimal if i have bad handwriting, but it takes more time and i lost advantage of checksum which offered by WIF.

You can just write in hex what you get after decoding base58, there is a checksum and version, you can just keep it. Also, in such case importing that key will be easier, because only encoding it as base58 will be needed.

Edit: Also, in case of handwriting I noticed it is much faster for me to write some hexadecimal characters with versions and checksums than typing base58-encoded private keys and addresses, it is just easier where you are a programmer and you have 16 simple characters instead of 58 and you have to pay attention on capitalization, similar characters like 5 and S, and so on. But of course in that case there could be problems between 6 and b or B and 8.

LoyceV

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Quote from: NotATether on September 30, 2021, 07:20:19 AM

one common error I encounter when typing passwords and PKs is typing an adjacent key to the right of the correct one

Tjat ja[[ems tp ,e tpp sp,eto,se/
I mean: that happens to me too sometimes.
But my assumption for this test is that people write down the key, a pen doesn't have this problem.

NeuroticFish

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Quote from: NotATether on September 30, 2021, 07:20:19 AM

Maybe it's because I'm a QWERTY typist, but it's still good to note.

This can bring another problem: one may think he's on QWERTY and he's actually on QWERTZ, hence typing y and z interchanged. But this may be off topic, since it's OP asked for handwriting.

NotATether

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Quote from: LoyceV on September 30, 2021, 07:14:29 AM

Quote from: NeuroticFish on September 30, 2021, 06:33:46 AM

* 1 - l - I can be easily confused

Quote from: Pmalek on September 30, 2021, 07:04:54 AM

Mistakes between uppercase 'o' and lowercase 'O'
Thinking the letter 'O' is the number '0'.

Those aren't much of a problem because 0, O, I, and l are excluded.
I've had most problems deciding between S and 5.

I admit I haven't written down any of these, but one common error I encounter when typing passwords and PKs is typing an adjacent key to the right of the correct one, e.g.:

i => o
s => d
e =>r
t =>y
EDIT: c => x (error from drifting left)

These are some of the more common mistakes.

Also sometimes I forget to Shift a letter, or perhaps I want to type "a" followed by some other character ("w" as a random example but it can happen with any character), instead of pressing "a" I press Left Shift (or worse, Caps Lock) and the next letter becomes uppercase.

*The probability of these errors increases inverse proportionally to the size of the keyboard/pad.

Maybe it's because I'm a QWERTY typist, but it's still good to note.

LoyceV

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Quote from: NeuroticFish on September 30, 2021, 06:33:46 AM

* 1 - l - I can be easily confused

Quote from: Pmalek on September 30, 2021, 07:04:54 AM

Mistakes between uppercase 'o' and lowercase 'O'
Thinking the letter 'O' is the number '0'.

Those aren't much of a problem because 0, O, I, and l are excluded.
I've had most problems deciding between S and 5.

ABCbits

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Quote from: LoyceV on September 30, 2021, 06:19:19 AM

1. Please write down 1 or more of the following private keys (created by Bitaddress.org) (dear Newbies, DO NOT use those in your wallet!). Do not double check your handwriting, I want to catch possible mistakes made when being careless.

1,~~"1LyPnHoU624ejo3Rb6nHv3GRMiDbM2Mvf9"~~,"KyHmMbp1TvBNBzi6uAAekb6DwtCsUJyYXG5CDrkDv2sCc8h4UfmD"
2,~~"1DJBmoEAhs3no14CCdQ3suUJiNcGg7qnWA"~~,"L4on7wrsP2vPyDkYKyTKnEudCTmU9kyH6ra6hiZXzhZWmQzM7v9g"
3,~~"18zBPQ64PoDhzfKNP1e3ufApGrbmQBr212"~~,"L1YqE8Y8FPn2fdBxMfe8wwU3bT5NPEfxMxLujHKpyYS7nrBLzv9K"

I don't bother take the test, but if i really want to write private key, i would split it every 4 character and 4-8 group of character on each line to reduce potential mistake.

Code:

KyHm Mbp1 TvBN Bzi6
uAAe kb6D wtCs UJyY
XG5C DrkD v2sC c8h4
UfmD

Alternatively i would convert the private key to HEX/decimal if i have bad handwriting, but it takes more time and i lost advantage of checksum which offered by WIF.

Pmalek

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Farewell, Leo. You will be missed!

I wrote down the second private key. I did it quickly without doublechecking because that's how mistakes are made. These are the possible dangers that I see with this particular private key when it comes to writing it down by hand if your handwriting is bad:

Mistakes between uppercase 'o' and lowercase 'O'
Thinking the letter 'o' is the number '0'.
Mistakes between uppercase 'W', 'V', 'K' and lowercase 'w', 'v', 'k'.
Thinking the uppercase 'V', is an uppercase 'U'.
Thinking the number '6', is a lowercase 'b'.
Thinking lowercase 'q' is a lowercase 'g'.

I will report back tomorrow.

Timelord2067

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I recall a game in High school which I *think* was called Chinese Whispers whereby students would form a circle, the teacher would whisper in the first students ear, they would repeat what was heard around the circle then the teacher would record what was said.

After a few times, various students would say their phrase out allowed and the circle was broken. This seems to be a sililar project. I might even give it a go...

Quote from: LoyceV on September 30, 2021, 06:19:19 AM

No spam
Self-moderated against spam. Discussion is of course allowed.

Well... Look up.

vjudeu

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The most common mistake I did when writing private keys and addresses was writing "W" instead of "w", the shape is similar, only the size is different.

NeuroticFish

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I've written down the last PK. I'll try to also reply tomorrow.
I expect to have no errors (of course), but I can tell some things I've seen that can lead to errors, maybe you can add some to your list:

* 1 - l - I can be easily confused
* one can easily type small cap instead of capital or the opposite (more chances, but not limited to those where the small cap and the capital letter is written in the same way)
* v and w can easily be written incorrect
* 5 and S
* 9 and g

And, maybe I'm overthinking it, but one may also miss one letter in the middle or the last few characters that didn't fit to the first row(s) on the paper, especially after one more copying from one paper to another.

LoyceV

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While playing around with PawGo's StellarSolver with shifting and rotating characters of a private key, I realized this:

Quote from: LoyceV on September 27, 2021, 11:26:29 AM

It would be nice to actually know some of the mistakes people have made before writing down keys, now I'm only guessing.

I'd appreciate some help with this!

1. Please write down 1 or more of the following private keys (created by Bitaddress.org) (dear Newbies, DO NOT use those in your wallet!). Do not double check your handwriting, I want to catch possible mistakes made when being careless.

1,~~"1LyPnHoU624ejo3Rb6nHv3GRMiDbM2Mvf9"~~,"KyHmMbp1TvBNBzi6uAAekb6DwtCsUJyYXG5CDrkDv2sCc8h4UfmD"
2,~~"1DJBmoEAhs3no14CCdQ3suUJiNcGg7qnWA"~~,"L4on7wrsP2vPyDkYKyTKnEudCTmU9kyH6ra6hiZXzhZWmQzM7v9g"
3,~~"18zBPQ64PoDhzfKNP1e3ufApGrbmQBr212"~~,"L1YqE8Y8FPn2fdBxMfe8wwU3bT5NPEfxMxLujHKpyYS7nrBLzv9K"

2. Wait a day! Don't look at this page again.

3. Type the private keys you wrote down yesterday, without checking the original in this topic. Now do double check to make sure you enter the exact same thing you wrote down. Even better if you tripple check. I'm not looking to find reading mistakes (because you can always check that again later when needed), I'm looking to find writing mistakes (which you can't correct when you're looking to import your private keys years after you wrote them down).

The goal of this topic is to find some mistakes, and see how difficult they are to recover. I'm curious to see if they match my assumptions of common mistakes.

Topic: Test writing mistakes: please write down these private keys for me - page 2. (Read 413 times)