Be careful. Protect your blockchain life / Cryptocurrency / ICO

— — Quick post for those who don’t use hard wallets like Nano ledger or Trezor or any paper wallets. — —

I’ve been doing a lot of hackathons and conferences lately — and I’m really shocked how people protect their blockchain private keys / passwords. Most people have private keys / passwords into local folders on their computer which are sync into the cloud using Drive Backup, Safari, etc. The problem is not really that they use the cloud to save their private keys, keystores, passwords but is that they don’t encrypt their private keys / folders on their local laptop. I’ve seen people sharing their laptop for checking code and hacking over the weekend … 😳 (A quick grep command line on keywords is super easy guys! )

The idea behind encryption is to be A to Z encrypted (end-to-end encryption). If you use a private key, keystore and save your password into a .txt file on your laptop, how can you be 100% sure that someone will not come and steal your password to open your keystore or simply use your private key ? When you connect through a shared wifi, shared network at an hackathon event — someone can easily hack into your laptop and steal information from your computer. Like Devcon for example… 🙄

You have to encrypt any files which are potentially sensitive — you can use different encryption tools for securing your files and folders: http://www.techradar.com/news/top-5-best-encryption-tools I personally use Veracrypt which is the successor to the popular TrueCrypt.

Also, make sure you disable any sharing stuff on your laptop if you shared a connection / wifi / network.

You should also encrypt your hard drive — so if you lose your machine or someone steal it, it will make it (“very”) difficult for them to access your data…and steal your money.

Very important as well — Don’t forget to use a VPN which will help you stay safe and secure online while above all keeping your private stuff private. You’ve got ton of different VPN ’s , I’ve been using TunelBear and ExpressVPN but I’m sure you can find better ones. All good ones are all quite expensive at the end of the day :/ I’m really excited for future blockchain powered VPN but for now we have to wait.

Protect your privacy.

PS: I think it’s obvious but don’t open your paper wallet or display private keys when you have people sitting around you 😅

JB.