Bitcoin Forum

I've been recommending this wallet to my less technical friend because it's my understanding that's it's safe even if the site/ company fails. Is it totally true?

I know that armory and paper wallet is probably the safest but for non technical people it's not really easy to setup.

Well any wallet is safe as long as your PC is safe from viruses and trojans.

Ps: It's true, you can use your bitcoins even if blockchain.info goes down, But you need to take a backup your wallet first.

Have your friend use electrum. It's very easy to use. Remind him to a) write the 12 word seed down on a piece of paper and put it in a safe place b) set a decent password. That's all he has to do.

If he has an android phone, I reccommend Mycellium, or the original android client. Both are good options for small amounts of money. For larger amounts, paper wallets are easy with http://bitaddress.org and desktop clients like armory or electrum.

Wallets are only as safe as you are. I would recommend a blockchain wallet for beginners. Just remember to set up all the security features like 2 factor auth and a second password.

Yes. Read this: https://blockchain.info/wallet/wallet-faq

You should also backup the wallet, just in case the site goes down sometime in future....

Blockchain.info is as safe as an online wallet -- which means its susceptible to possible attacks either from the server side or from your own account getting hacked.

Blockchain does offer some nice features such as multi-recipient transactions, and adding notes to the blockchain tx, but I'd only suggest using it as a temporary wallet, not to hold all your coins.

You can, however, export directly into Multibit from a Blockchain backup and then create a cold storage wallet.

One thing to be aware of is that Blockchain regularly sends a copy of your wallet to your email address registered with the site, if you make any changes to your account. Make sure that once you've downloaded these, you delete the email, and any old copies! And one definite thing to avoid: do not link your Blockchain account to Gmail -- which can be compromised and then have your wallet/password captured.

So how exactly do you backup your private keys with blockchain wallet?

To backup the addresses' private keys, you have to manually copy the keys to a secure place, preferably offline.
To get the private key : Settings > Addresses > Choose a bitcoin address and click on "More Options" > Private Key > Continue .
The keys should be stored carefully because without them, you would be out of  BTCBTCBTC !