A Guide to Security of Your Crypto Assets

Hello Lions! When I got to know about crypto, I was stunned about its possibilities and quite scared too about the security of my funds. Anyone will invest on something when he or she feels that it is secured and I am not an exception. Well, there are many mistakes which we could do that could result in potential loss of our crypto assets. But, as I studied more and more about crypto, I developed some understanding about how I could securely save my funds. Today, in this blog, I will share some of my understanding and knowledge about it.

I will start from the one thing that we all require it when we first sign up to something. Yes! the password . Although, many of us may ignore setting an unique and strong password, but I have to tell you, setting a strong and unique password will never cost you anything but it will certainly provide you a better security. Do not come up with something related to you like your name, Date of birth or your girl friend name (if you have one, wink). You have no idea, what hackers have access to! Often, they use a list of commonly used passwords that can be easily bought on the dark web by breaching well-known databases. There is a strong chance that your password could be among the millions that they can fire in the hope of landing a lucky shot. Now, to avoid getting caught here, do not reuse a same password over and over again on all your important sites. I understand, it's a tough job to keep remembering all your unique passwords, but for the utmost security of your funds, you can do that. Right?

Coming to the second tip, You should always set up two-factor authentication (2FA). This includes for your exchange accounts, emails, bank accounts and even social media. What I could suggest you to use a phone based 2FA and not an email based one. By phone based I mean using authenticator app like Google authenticator or Microsoft authenticator and not a phone number based, cause hackers can gain access to your phone number in a process called sim swapping and get all your OTPs and important messages.

Now, if you want to go a step further, then you can use a security key, this is basically a USB device that you can sync with your online accounts including your email accounts, google accounts or your crypto exchange accounts. Therefore in order to log into your account you'll need to physically have access to one of these devices.

If you have already done doing the above two, and there are some sites which are not so much important for you, then in that case, you could use a separate email account to sign up into it. This can be sometime inconvenience but in an any extreme case like when hackers get access to your email in a data breach, then those guys will not be having the account you use for all your important accounts like for banking and for exchanges.

I have already told in one of my previous blog, to store most of your crypto in self-custody. Just withdraw the crypto from an exchange and store it in a offline wallet. The main benefit is that you fully control your funds and just like Satoshi intended. It is way more safe to cold store your assets disconnected from the internet. You can get yourself a hardware device. These are physical wallets that store your private keys on them and are connected to your pc through a USB cable. The main benefit of these devices is that your private key is never exposed to the internet. So basically if I want to install malware into your PC, I will never have access to your private keys.

Moving ahead, the next tip is applicable for both online and offline storage of your crypto assets. This is to backup your seed words that you find whenever you generate a new wallet. This comes in handy to recover you wallet, when you loss your passwords. Do not store your seed words in your PC or in your smartphone or in a password manager. As I have already said, these could be easily manipulated by hackers. To avoid that, store your seeds by writing them in the given order in a piece of paper. If you buy a hardware wallet then it usually comes with its own seed cards and once you've written them down then be sure to store them in a very safe location. Now, if you are someone who has doubt about the long-term life of paper (what if it gets burned or destroyed in a flood), then there are steel seed cards that you can buy to mitigate against the fragility of paper.

Coming to the end of my article, you should always keep in mind that no one, I am stressing it again, no one should know how much crypto assets you own. There are people or forces out there if they know about your crypto portfolio, what if they put a gun your head. Apart from handing over your wallet, there's nothing much you could do. So flexing or bragging about you holdings online or offline will only attract problems to your life. So, avoid doing that.

That's it folks. I hope these article and these tips help you in some way. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

All the images used in this blog are my original work and belongs to me unless and otherwise separately mentioned

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Games I play on Hive

Games I play on Hive	Game description
Terracore	Terracore is an Idle mining game based on Hive blockchain
Rise of the Pixels	ROTP is a Web3 browser game about game development on Hive
Splinterlands	Splinterlands is an online collectible play to earn card game using blockchain technology

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