Topic: Writing down seed phrase: printer ink or pen ink ? - page 4. (Read 1190 times)

Exactly, I don't see any real reason for using printers for this purpose, unless all pencils in the world are suddenly gone forever... but I guess you could still write with fingers.
I like those invisible ink pencils/pens that expose writing under specific light, and this would be my counter-attack to printer yellow dots 

I didn't know about this, but it looks like this project is supperted by Bendestag aka German government.

I have several USB devices that suddenly died on me, so I am not considering them a viable option for any important backup.
They can also create errors with operating system if they are encrypted resulting in easy disc format and permanent data destruction.
I wish there was some physical switch that disables writing like it was with old magnetic tapes long time ago.

I understand the reasoning behind this, and if that makes you feel safer and/or fits with your threat model, then by all means go ahead. But again, as I discussed above regarding steel back ups, I find this unnecessary.

Lets say that I have three copies of a seed phrase, all hand written on paper (using good quality ink and good quality paper), stored in three separate physical locations. I know that under the reasonable conditions of temperature, humidity, etc., that the copy stored on site in my house will experience, I'm going to get decades out of it before the ink fades to any significant degree. In terms of my offsite back ups, I'm still checking on them at least every few months so I know if they have been compromised or damaged in any way. Even assuming these offsite backups are exposed to such environmental extremes that the ink fades in only a year, I'll find out before they become unreadable and will be able to replace then as needed.

If you have created your seed phrase on an airgapped device then there is little additional risk to creating a back up of your seed phrase on an encrypted USB drive. But very few people do this. If you have, on the other hand, created your seed phrase on a hardware wallet, which thousands if not millions more people do, then creating an encrypted USB drive back up poses a significant additional risk since most people do not have a properly airgapped device with which to do so.

I will use a permanent marker on a piece of paper, where the ink can be absorbed by the paper. (Not on a piece of plastic for instance, where it will only be on the surface) ...after that, I will laminate it to protect it from the elements. (Do not place this in direct sunlight, because it will fade over time)

I will NOT print it with anything, because most printers have some kind of buffer that stores the information and this buffer can be accessed by hackers. (Photocopier machines even have hard drives that can be accessible to these hackers) ....or the buffer can be on your local PC hard drive, after it has been dumped from the Printer buffer. 

Do not place these devices on the Internet, when you do this.... I bought a cheap second hand computer and printer that will never see the Internet again ....and I use them to print "Paper wallets" for cold storage. 

Agreed. Printing a private key (or a seed phrase) increases the scope of possible ways that your key could be stolen.

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I would also bring up that it is a best practice to store backups of your seed phrase in multiple mediums of storage. So if you do decide to store one copy that is written on paper, you should store another copy of your seed in some medium of storage, such as an encrypted USB stick or encrypted HDD. This way if your ink does fade, you will hopefully still have access to your other backups. 

If you are interested in that subject, maybe you should check that program: https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda
Developed by scientists from Dresden, allows you to detect and modify/remove yellow dots. Or just read a data encoded.

By the way, do you know story of Reality Winner? Yep, dots.

I suppose a very theoretical risk would be an attacker finding your seed phrase and then tracking you down via this tracking information to extort you for other seed phrases, other wallets, passphrases, etc.

Just another minor point to add to the list of "Why over complicate things with a printer?". Write your seed phrase down, laminate the paper if you so choose, job done.

I don't worry about it because I don't use printed seed words, and i don't want invisible yellow dots anywhere on my forensically traceable papers.
Using passphrase with seed words would make job harder for anyone who wants to steal your coins, but they could identify computer and printer you used, with exact details about time, date and maybe IP address.
However, there are some printer models that apparently don't display tracking dots:
I prefer hand and pencil over toner.

I always assumed only high-resolution "modern" printers do that, but it turns out the technology was developed in the mid-1980s. I wouldn't worry about yellow dots on an old black and white laser printer, but more imporantly: the tracking is meant to track a printout to a certain printer. Printed seed phrases aren't meant to be shared, and even if someone would get their hands on it, they wouldn't be interested to know which printer you used. They would just take your money.

I prefer toner over ink.

You should know that most printers have coded tracking dots that prints invisible Machine Identification Codes with time, date and printer serial number on paper, with who knows what else to track what you print.
I would never want to use something like that for printing bitcoin seed phrase, and I don't agree with you that printer ink will last for centuries.
Long time I ago I remember printing some cd covers on my old printer and they all faded a lot, this could be because of cheap ink paint, but you get my point.

Don't buy a printer on Bitcointak, buy it on Craigslist. That makes a targeted attack much less likely.

Why not both? I like how a former-trusted-now-scamming paper wallet site designed the paper: print the private key twice, one of them upside down, with the QR-code in between. That means you can still recover the key even if you lose a substantial part of the paper.

Incredible idea! To add a GSM module into old printer, change firmware and start selling it bitcoin forums. Then transmit to a given server the content of suspected prints.
Fantastic, let’s do it. How we would call our start-up?

By the way, maybe saving seed as a QRcode could be a partial solution for missing parts?

Are you afraid someone might have added hidden spying technology just in case someone will print a secret on his old printer? I wouldn't worry about an old HP LaserJet (except for it's weight and size). And because they're so old and mainstream, I expect it to work without problems from most Linux LIVE DVDs.

I've discussed this before, but my main argument against stainless steel over paper is that I find it unnecessary.

When you compare a single stainless steel back up to a single paper back up, then absolutely stainless steel is a better choice. It will be more resistant to fire, water, corrosion, crush, explosions, etc. However, one back is no back up at all. You should have, at a minimum, your seed phrase backed up in two separate but secure geographical locations. Given this scenario, I find stainless steel unnecessary. What are the chances that my airgapped laptop and two separate paper back ups will all be destroyed simultaneously?

If you want to use steel then by all means go ahead, but don't let perfect be the enemy of good and don't delay backing up your seed phrase properly while you get all the necessary equipment to make a steel back up. And don't think that a single steel back up is better than redundancy with multiple paper back ups.

And if you do go for a metal back up, then please choose one which involves stamping words on to a metal plate, and not the multiple ones on the market which involve slotting tiles in to a holder, which all perform incredibly poorly on stress testing.

Finding an old printer is hard unless you have one at home that you definitely know is safe.  Finding a new printer is a bad idea since new technology means more points of failure for situations like yours.. I mean it is almost impossible to buy a device nowadays that has no wireless technology in it.  Purchasing an old printer from someone else is a bad, bad idea as you have no idea who and how someone may have messed with it.  So printers are a big no for me.

Why would I choose another material over stainless steel?  I get that chances are you will not get past airport security check without them finding and investigating your metal seed phrase since it is metal unless you are lucky.  But besides metal detection, is there any other situation or reason paper may be a better choice than stainless steel?

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Regards,
PrivacyG

And then I realized one day there's an easier solution to this:



As you can see, I always unplug the cables before printing. 

It depends on the printer: in my experience, a new printer is terrible to install offline, while many old laserjets work out of the box.
I don't really mind having network drivers, just unplug the cable and disable wifi. If that's not enough: remove the physical card.

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to create a bootable Linux disto with nothing but printer drivers so to speak.
No networking but CUPS installed as @ETFbitcoin mentioned AND although driverless printing kind of works, on the rest of the DVD / USB you would have nothing but all the printer drivers you could find. That and a copy of something to generate a seed phrase.

-Dave

Absolutely. But very few people actually use properly airgapped computers, and if you have the technical knowledge required to properly airgap a device, then you are almost certainly already aware of the risks of printing a seed phrase over hand writing one and how to mitigate against those risks too.

Also agree, but the risk here is that OP is not generating his seed phrase on his computer at all, but is generating it on a hardware wallet or even a mobile wallet, and then typing it in plain text in to his non-airgapped computer, in which case the additional risk is significant.

There is one thing I really don't get.
If we're talking about durability only, not risks of having the private key exposed while printing or risking writing the wrong letter when you do it yourself, why not do both? I mean, it's paper, its costs are ridiculously low, it doesn't weigh a ton, and two pieces of paper 2x10 cm are just as easy to hide as one unless you want to print each letter on an A1 sheet.
So why not do both, put them side by side, and hope at least one will last a century?


Depends a lot on both the printer and the quality of the paper.
While I was graduating university there was an influx of shitty paper that looked great as it was white and almost shined in the light, even cheating papers with small characters printed with the cheapest inkjet were quite easy to read when hiding in your sleeve (not that I did ever that), but none, absolutely none of all my work during those years, although kept in a bookshelf, has more than let's say 60% of the original print, some of the pages have even miraculously glued themselves to each other.
If you use good stuff yeah, it will last a lot, hopefully, but I would still trust a stainless steel plate over the paper, a pen might be mightier than a sword but a steel plate beats the crap out of any sheet of paper.

It depends on the quality of the paper and the ink, almost always it is good and will last a very long time as you said but I've seen cases with low quality paper and low quality ink (pens) that faded away after a year or two.

Technically you should do this on the same computer that the seed phrase was created on. Meaning if the computer is air gap then this risk doesn't exist, if it is not then storing it in a notepad adds only a small risk on top of already very risky setup.
P.S. You don't have to save the notepad on disk to print it.