Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash
Relay on online exchanges to store your crypto is not considered the best practice because they are vulnerable to hacking attacks.
Instead of keeping your crypto on an exchange, use a wallet that lets you own your private key by creating a seed phrase.
The Seed Phrase is a series of 12–24 randomized words created when setting up a wallet.
Note: It’s also called a seed key, recovery key, or seed phrase.
The wallet creates public-private key pairs based on the seed phrase.
If your wallet is lost or destroyed, you can use the seed phrase to recover all your crypto holdings.
That is why it is important to store the seed phrase safely.
Here are some methods to store your seed phrase securely:
Take a Pen and Paper Write Down Your Seed Phrase
One simple and secure way to store your wallet’s seed phrase is to take a pen and paper, write it down, and keep that paper in a secure place.
It’s the cheapest way to store seed words, and the main advantage of writing them down on paper is that they never become digital, helping you avoid dangers like viruses or malware.
However, paper can easily be misplaced, destroyed by water, or damaged by fire.
Use a Hardware Wallet
There are different types of crypto wallets for storing your assets, including paper wallets, desktop wallets, and hardware wallets.
A hardware wallet can protect 99.99% of your crypto assets from various attacks.
Hardware wallets are physical devices — often resembling USB sticks — that store your crypto holdings securely. When setting up your wallet, your seed phrase is stored in a protected area of a microcontroller, ensuring it cannot be transferred out in plaintext.
For additional protection, you can enable two-factor authentication (2FA).
Popular hardware wallets like Ledger Nano X and Trezor are recommended for safeguarding your seed words.
Use Metal Plates (Metal Puch Card)
Metals like steel, aluminum, and titanium can survive extreme temperatures and are resistant to saltwater and acids. Various companies provide metal plates for securely storing your seed words.
Metal plates have 24 numbered slots — 12 on each side — where you can engrave your seed words using letter punches. Be sure to do this yourself in private.
Once your words are engraved, store the plate in a secure location. Companies like Cryptosteel, and Cobo Tablet offer reliable metal plates.
Use a Safety Deposit Box
Again and again, I’m saying to store your Seed Word hard copy in a secure place protected from unauthorized access and natural calamities.
You can use the Safety Deposit box to store your Seed Word hard copies like paper or metal plates because these boxes require multiple keys, identification, or fingerprint scanners to gain access and are locked away in vaults that are monitored 24 hours/day.
Also, the Safety Box is immune to fire or water.
But they can only be accessed during bank hours, and the bank controls access to the box. There may also be costs involved.
Set an Advanced Recovery Phrase or Passphrase
What if your recovery seed gets compromised?
Setting a passphrase adds an extra layer of protection.
A passphrase is a password attached to your seed phrase that unlocks an additional set of accounts. If an attacker tries to access a passphrase-protected account, they will need both the seed phrase and the passphrase.
Keep in mind that a passphrase can be up to 50 characters long. Misspelling even one character will generate an entirely new wallet linked to your original recovery seed.
Both Trezor and Ledger Nano X allow you to set passphrases.
Use Steganography
Steganography is a technique used to hide a file or message within another file or message.
You can use this technique to hide your seed phrase within other files.
There is a tool called Stegoseed, which helps you to convert your seed phrase into a long story which you can save as a text document on your computer.
Whenever you need your seed, you can paste a saved long story to this tool to get your seed phrase back.
I used fake Seed Phrase to show you the tool preview
Stegoseed builds a story around your Seed Phrase using non-Seed words as filler text. This allows the tool to work in reverse to decipher the seed words by simply pasting the entire story.
Note: If you want to store your seed using Stegoseed then, it is safer to download the files from Github and run the tool locally from your computer.
Memorize Hole Seed Phrase
The most secure method to store your seed is by memorizing it.
However, remembering a 24-word phrase can be difficult.
You can try creating a story around the seed or use mnemonic pegging techniques to memorize it.
These are the simple methods to follow for keeping your recovery seed safe.
Also, I listed some methods you never follow to store your seed.
Never Use These Methods
#1 Don’t take a screenshot or mobile photo of your seed because computers/mobile are vulnerable, an attacker can easily gain access to your device and copy it.
#2 Never make a digital copy of the seed phrase; never store it on email or cloud services.
#3 Never buy or accept a used hardware wallet.
#4 Never print your seed word.
#5 Never share your seed with a stranger or post on social media.
#6 Don’t use a pre-generated seed.
#7 Do not split up your seed into 2–3 parts to keep it in different locations. This can be fatal, and you can lose everything you have.
Conclusion
The security of your crypto holdings ultimately depends on how safely you store your seed phrase. Use one or more of the methods above to keep your seed safe.
Which method do you prefer, and why? Let me know in the comments.
Top 7 Simple Ways to Secure Your Recovery Seed from Hackers and Loss was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.