Bitcoin Forum

What's stopping someone from obtaining my wallet address and stealing from me?

It seems to me that once you have the actual address you can pretend to be that person with any other wallet application out there.

Give it a try, tell us how it works out for you.  ;)

You're new here, aren't you.  :)

Do you mean the private key? If someone has your private key (Not your address) they can spend the funds of the connected address

So protect your wallet and the private keys they contain, you are what is stopping someone from "obtaining" your wallet or private keys.

All someone can do with the public address is send coins to it.

Hi,

Just don't worry about it just keep your keys to yourself
and your address public.
However  you can't just use a wallet just by knowing the address

Enjoy

Take a look at BitAddress:

 - http://www.bitaddress.org

After wiggling your mouse It shows a paper wallet.  It has a private key and a public address.

All that is needed to spend is the private key.  From that private key, the public address can be determined.

The Bitcoin.org client doesn't let you see the private key, only the public address.   In your wallet.dat are the private keys for each of your addresses.

As long as those are kept protected from unauthorized access nobody else can spend your funds.   You might want to use the passphrase encryption available to help protect the keys in your wallet.dat from some of the theats to it -- but don't lose the passphrase and make backups after you've encrypted.

It's a lot harder to steal than you think

Nah, all that is really needed is a trojan delivered from this very forum (which has demonstrated severe security issues several times in the past). The trojan then grabs the wallet.dat off of your pc and sends it to the trojan programmer. Looking at how "seriously" people take security, we can expect an amount of about 80 to 90% unencrypted wallets. So that's a nice haul.

you'll be rich in no time...

In real life imagine if you carried around a wallet that had your social security number, drivers license, mother's maiden name, routing numbers all contained within it. You wouldn't just leave it around for other people to snatch.

Unfortunately the way Bitwallets are set up, other than being able to enter a encryption password (that can be stolen with a keylogger.) you have no choice but to have all that info in one bag.

But by using a Linux Live Boot CD to deal with bitcoin transfers, and keeping your wallet.dat file (rename it to something else.) on a offline usb drive, it becomes much safer.


I'm sure we'll see big security improvements in the future.

You can give your Bitcoin address to anyone - that's what it's for. The worst someone can do is send you illicit money linked to terrorist hacking child porn drug cartels, and that's still not a big problem, as Bitcoin payments can be hard to trace.

The wallet file on your computer however you must protect, both by backing it up so it doesn't get lost if your computer crashes, and also by protecting it from other people/hackers/trojan horses. The wallet on your computer has the secrets that allow spending any bitcoins that are sent to your addresses.

I read something quite different, that BTC are easily traceable.

So what can happen if you receive unknowingly bitcoins connected in this way? Has there been any examples of this yet?

From what I understand "torwallet" was designed to help clean money, as transactions are traceable.  DO NOT USE torwallet however it looks like it has turned out to be a scam.  (Duh)

Anyways in response to the main question, it is just a number in my opinion and encrypted or not I don't think your account is ever completely "safe."  I think the single best way to avoid theft (after utilizing security precautions already mentioned in this thread) would be to avoid dependency on any single piece of software, website, service, or machine. You need to spread out your wealth rather than have one single wallet.

Scams target people of all backgrounds, ages and income levels across