Take care of your private keys. Save a backup of your wallets.
One sad will be to actually have a fortune and lose your private keys and worst it will be to lose your coins to a hacker, that is why if you hold or you are going to host your own private keys you must make your homework before starting and dedicate some time to it so that you better understand what you are doing, even if you already know how to set up your own wallets and save your private keys you should still read this article, maybe my advice may help you in the future.
When backing up your private keys make sure you are not doing anything else but just that task, that way you will prevent any errors from your part in case you lose concentration you may write down one word of your seed phrase that is wrong and make your whole wallet invalid if possible write down your keys to a piece of paper and make sure to verify your seed phrase before sending any large amounts.
A good way to verify that you actually have your 24 words seed phrase is by sending and small amount into your new setup wallet and processing to delete your newly created wallet so that you can restore your wallet from recovery seeds. That way you will know your seed phrase actually works and that you have access to your funds.
When writing your seed phrase you could do it on a piece of paper but make sure no one else has access to that paper and that is protected against fires and floods if you want to have your phrases on an offline form. The other way will be to write down your seed words into a document file like Writer for Open Office or Word for Microsoft Office.
When writing down those words for the first time it will be a good idea to do it on a PC that is disconnected from the internet, and if possible to use a newly installed version of Linux, or even a Live USB stick, once you write down your words you must protect that file with a password that you haven't use before on any other place. And also putting that document inside a WinRar file too. To protect it yet by another different password.
Once your text file is protected by a writer or word password, protect it with a compressed password as well, in this case, WinRar, you could also put that file into another folder and compress that folder too, so that way your phrase key will be protected by three different passwords, make sure they are not the same as your email password or any other online service. And make sure you can remember them as well.
Once your seed phrase is protected you could upload your file to Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive too, but make sure those services are protected by yet a different password than the ones you used in your recovery phrase, and also make sure you put a second-factor authentication (2FA) in your online accounts.
This way your recovery seed phrase will be protected by four passwords and one 2FA token as well, and also you will protect your seeds against accidental loss, and also add your own backups at home like have your files also on a secondary hard drive if in case you lose access to your online accounts you still have your own backups in your house or secure place as well.
Having your own private keys and hosting your own private keys is a responsibility that you must do in order to protect your money, and there are no compromises on this unless you want to use custodian services and if you want to use custodian services then you wouldn't be better off using cryptocurrencies. Part of being your own bank is being responsible with yourself first and most. Otherwise, you could end up losing your satoshis to a hack.
I would also recommend for you learn to use Linux distributions for the purpose of using your device to access your coins, it is always good to have a dedicated device when it comes to using the blockchain, and you must make sure you can remember your passwords too. And use passwords that are easy for you to remember but hard for hackers to guess. I hope my advice can help someone out there on the internet.
I recommend that people use online backup tools because it is easy to save files that way, in the case you lose your USB sticks or external drives you still have access to your private keys. Having your private keys on online storage also could help you if you need to restore your keys in another location, or if you suddenly need to change your location. Another thing that I would recommend is for users to use Authy for their 2FA application because that app helps you recover your 2FA tokens with just a phone number and password.
So in case you lose your device or phone you can restore your 2FA passwords fast by using your phone number or email to recover your tokens, also make sure you set yet another password to protect your 2FA tokens as well.
As you can see it is all about passwords and different passwords for each thing and you must remember them correctly but you also must make them hard for hackers to guess as well, and that way you will have your own bank secure and you will be your own bank without having to rely on custodian services. That is an advantage of using cryptocurrencies but you must be willing to learn to use them properly for those features to be useful to you.
If you have something else you would like to add please by all means leave your comment in the comment section and I will respond to your comments and ideas. And if you could add your knowledge to this topic that will also be wonderful.
[link] [comments]