Topic: Trust No One - page 5. (Read 161328 times)

Seriously. Don't trust the exchanges, don't trust online wallet services, don't trust your anti-virus software, and don't trust anybody online.

If you absolutely must trust someone with your bitcoins, for the love, choose carefully!

1. Put all your coins in a new wallet that has never connected to the network
2. Encrypt that wallet with the maximum security you can find, using the most secure password you can keep track of
3. Delete the plaintext wallet, and distribute the encrypted wallet to every piece of physical media you own, store it online, and send it to several people you trust

Frankly if we are going to get this market off the ground we have to trust SOMEBODY.  I like your guidelines.  If you know where and who the person is, you have a leg up in litigating your funds back (since bitcoins do have an estimate-able value, theft is a criminal action.)  Another thing you should require is a merchant agreement.  When you are making a purchase online you want there to be a page (or better yet, receive and e-mail) that says exactly what product or service you are receiving and the cost in bitcoins.  You also want this to include the deposit address for the wallet, so you can prove that you paid to that address the specified amount from your transaction history. (print off the webpage.)

Another important factor is if they accept cash transactions.  In the United States and many Western Countries cash is legal tender, required by law to be accepted for transactions.  If they do not have a method for you to buy their product using a cash method, such as paypal, credit card, Western Union, etc, and operate solely on bitcoin then they are operating illegally.  Even if they are legitimately offering products and services you are taking a gamble that they won't be closed down through legal channels before filling your order, and probably shouldn't be trusted anyways for their complete lack of business sense.

Edit http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx Apparently private businesses in the US are not required to accept cash, but it would definitely be a step towards their credibility in my opinion.  Since fraud with legal tender is a federal offense and raises the stakes quite a bit for criminals.

hello Stunna

i send email to suppot but me missed ho tro as vay me logged in them in here you can you will support me faster

I make cashout for 0061 BTC to 1BjAGVLqWw7xMrSdzzSRsz9gRENCLMZviA

of me, but I have not received them, please check and pay them for me, thank you

This is the sort of paranoia we need more of around here!

In this case, a less trusted forum member (me) was leveraging the trust of someone who was much more trusted. Michael Hendrix met all my requirements for how to choose someone to trust if you must (listed above), except obviously he had no insurance himself. In that forum thread I was telling the people placing bets that they don't need to trust me if they trust him, since he was holding my bond.

We could have been in cahoots, but there wouldn't be any point to doing that. Michael already has a lot of trust - he doesn't need my help to scam people if he decides he wants to do so.

I agree. It seems hard to use Bitcoins if they are stored offline. Coinbase seems like a reputable company that I trust with my coins. Coinbase also offers offline wallets, but I haven't used those yet.

I don't see the point of acquiring BTC and put them into an off-line wallet and not use them for years unless you know for sure it will go high.

I think the purpose of bitcoin is to exchange and invest.

I don't know where I stand. Although I don't trust anyone, and the only time I'll actually use bitcoins is probably to transfer it into USD, from a respected, well known exchange. I kinda laugh at the password suggestions. The things you mention like, my "wife's favorite food, mother's maiden name, plus, plus, plus plus" is laughable. No offense to anyone who does this sort of thing, but personally, I see no reason for this.

Security is for "dumb" people.(Again, no offense intended.) What I mean is, the less informed, those who don't really understand what security is. First off, there was already an article on this subject about long passwords vs short password, etc. Some will create stupid passwords like "god" "ego" "ihaveabigdick" and expect this to be secure, and have the guts to complain when something goes wrong, so it forces companies like Microsoft to make required passwords insanely more stupid in order to fend off the stupid people.

What I do is this: Throw away accounts: Facebook, Microsoft(Hotmail), Google/Gmail, sites like that, get my simplified password, my middle name(13 chars)(I have two), or my last name(9 chars) followed by a question mark, because I'm forced to because of tinfoil hat people, and "security dumbdumbs". Where is my middle name? Not on Facebook, not on Google, no where online. Only family knows my middle name, or friends that happen to ask me. Though, really, middle names aren't really a discussion.
I also don't casually tell them that this is my password.


Secure, where I have the choice: One of my middle names(7 chars), 1337'ed. Question mark sometimes added for "security" as to not easily be "bruteforced", ps: Never been hacked, ever. Never have had a single account stolen, robbed, taken over, whatever in over 12 years being online, using the same exact password schematics.
 

Seriously. Don't trust the exchanges, don't trust online wallet services, don't trust your anti-virus software, and don't trust anybody online.

If you absolutely must trust someone with your bitcoins, for the love, choose carefully!

• Do you know their full name?
• Do you know where they are located?
• Have they demonstrated trustworthiness in the past?
• Are they asking you to trust them? (red flag)
• Do they have insurance?

Insurance? Impossible, you say. Not so!

When I needed people to trust me to hold bitcoins for a contest, I deposited 50 bitcoins as a bond with a well-respected forum member, so that even if I did something stupid and lost people's money, they would still be reimbursed. You can read about it here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/finished-bet-on-bitcoin-future-price-here-july-1st-2011-10008

Consider carefully who you will trust. With bitcoins, elaborate scams may be profitable. For instance, someone may develop trust for their user name over many months with small transactions on this forum, then take advantage of that trust to make off with a lot of money. Such a scam would only be worth doing on this forum. No other forum in the world would be worth the effort.

If you want someone to hold your bitcoins for you, there are NO online services that have the transparency and security to make me comfortable using them for storing bitcoins for more than a short time in small amounts. The only way to do it is like I did - choose someone whom you believe to be trustworthy, and approach them. If they approach you, or in any way say or insinuate that they are a trustworthy person to hold your coins, STAY AWAY.

If you are thinking that I might not be trustworthy, since I am writing this post about the issue, you are approaching the appropriate level of paranoia.

If you want to store your bitcoins with maximum security, there are lots of resources about how to do it, such as this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet

Here's my summary:

1. Put all your coins in a new wallet that has never connected to the network
2. Encrypt that wallet with the maximum security you can find, using the most secure password you can keep track of
3. Delete the plaintext wallet, and distribute the encrypted wallet to every piece of physical media you own, store it online, and send it to several people you trust

Don't think you can generate and remember a secure enough password? Create a super-long password, and store clues to help you remember it. For instance, your password clue file might say:

My standard password + My throwaway password (backwards, all caps) + &#$%@ + First two sentences of first paragraph of page 19 of my favorite book (include all capitalization and punctuation) + My wife's mother's middle name + My son's favorite superhero + My favorite number times 8734 + food my wife hates (backwards, all caps) + 9-digit number stored with my paper will + 10-character password stored in my safety deposit box + . . . .

You can go on in this way to create as long a password as you want. Store this password clue file with your encrypted wallet, and optionally encrypt both with a simple standard password to keep out snoopers.

In this way, not only can you recover your coins from your "savings account" at a later date, if you get hit by a chicken truck tomorrow and die, your loved ones can probably piece together your password and recover the coins too (better make sure you trust them, and that between them they have or can get the answers to those clues).

I recommend that you practice your wallet encryption and recovery a few times with a small number of coins, until you are very comfortable with the process before you try it with the bulk of your savings.

And remember, this is how most bitcoins services get started:



Comic from: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/new-bitcoin-comic-13903