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I just find out that some people are storing their private keys and recovery seed in cloud data storages, if you are one of them better go ahead and erase them, cloud storages aren't that secured like they promised, some scammers are breaching them easily and some are using search engines to find private keys data stored on cloud storages, you've been warned.

It is true that storing a private key or recovery seed wallet in the cloud is very risky for hacking or other attacks, the best solution is to write it down and store it in a safe place.

You better go back to the primitive ways of storing very vital information such as your private keys than use the latest technologies like cloud storage. If you are storing your wallet keys in a storage facility which could possibly be accessed by a lot of people, has a server, managed and operated by a certain private company, it is not safe. It is a lot safer if you just write it down on a piece of paper, roll it, and put it inside a piece of bamboo.

Honestly storing your private keys on cloud storage is like giving away your private keys to the public and it isn't supposed to be so, private keys and recovery seed should be private, who tells you that cloud storages are private? No they are not, no platform can safeguard your private keys for you than you

Storing private keys on a computer, smartphone or cloud storage is always a huge risk, and be prepared that your coins can be stolen at any moment.  This topic has already been raised several times.

Of course saving your seed phrase or private keys on cloud storage makes your funds vulnerable to being hacked and imported to another wallet, Bitcoin users need to take responsibility of their funds without the use of a third party service, the best practice in storing your seed phrase is writing it down and keeping it only to yourself. Having said that, either using a hw wallet or keeping your funds/private keys offline/cold storage is the best form of security, anything online is susceptible to being breached or hacked.

To add to that, always use a non-custodial wallet too, exchange/custodial wallets can also be hacked, many exchanges as we all know have been hacked, if you're going to use Bitcoin and crypto, you need to be your own bank and avoid any 'extra' service when it comes to your wallets/funds.

I would say consider those keys as compromised. If you need this method of storage at least encrypt them before uploading them.

I agree with OP. That's why I did reset my Ledger Nano S after the delivery. I still kept my seed written on a piece of paper and kept somewhere no one ever could imagine. Even if someone find from my home, s/he wouldn't know about a thing as well. Lol!

This is really serious, how can people make such mistake of storing their private keys on cloud storage, this is money related issue and should be taken with utmost care and importance, because it can be hijacked by hackers. Even when creating wallets with some mobile applications like Imtoken, they will always advice users not to take screenshots of their private keys or mnemonic phrases but to write it down and store in a secure place, meaning that, it is the best form of securing the private keys. Seriously, anyone doing this, should stop and delete those keys from the cloud storage because it is not safe, hackers are getting smarter everyday because crypto is becoming more valuable each day.
In my own opinion, writing it down and keeping in secure places is till date the best way to protect your private keys, because only you knows where it is.

I totally agree that it is risky to store private keys at some place online and there should be a service to store private keys securely because i have seen people losing private keys from their computers or lost their flash drives with private keys in them. So the market need solutions for securely storing private keys.

for me cloud storage is not safe my friend
and maybe the right place to store our private key is by write down the private keys in a paper
but, its seems very complicated for few people's

Everything is correct. Whenever I hear about cloud storage of any kind, every time I think of a story in which world stars fall prey to hackers.
In particular, those stories where naked and sexy photos of celebrities come to light. Most often this happens after their cloud storage is hacked.

Well, it's not a problem to store on a cloud storage at all if you have more security like :
- Created an email for only purpose store your data, never share the email or used them for creating account.
- Change type of your file.
- Make another protection using Cryptography Tools.
- Then you can make another last step, make the .rar file have a password.

Even your email can be a breach, they cannot breach password rar or cryptography password.

Believe it or not but people generally use exchanges as their only wallet lol.  So it doesn't surprise me all the silly things people do to store their keys.  I dont know that will change (if ever at all) but anyone who uses these non secure ways to keep their keys they will end up losing some if not all of their stack in some sort of way.

cloud storage is always unsecure but actually you can make it secure by encrypting your private key further and then save it in cloud storage as archived document with password. But, you can simply buy harddisk for cheap rather than cloud storage with disadvantage if your harddisk got broken you probably couldnt retrieve it.
but, saving it in cloud storage as encrypted and archived file atleast gives you more security than writing it on paper and then you lost that paper.

Online environment is not a safe place for you to store your identity documents or your wallet keys.

I don't refer to the service you use to store your keys but with any cloud storage service you use, you give them your trust and give them your wallet keys. They can be a trusted companies with good security system but in a bad day, their service can be attacked and database can be stolen. Your data with wallet keys can be breached and believe me if it is breached your money will be stolen.

What you see is news on Internet hours or days later when hackers finished their works and stole your money.

Store your wallet keys offline, to be safe!

It's very dumb to store our private key in the cloud storage as your privatekey is secure because people who gained the access to your cloud storage can steal your wallet keys easily.
This is not a recommended way to store your private key for a long time ago.
A paper wallet is the only best way to store your wallet consider it has very high security compared storing your keys in the cloud storage or offline in your desktop.
When there were still people who did it and they could be the uneducated person to put their money into the very big risk with a high possibility to be stolen by the hackers or scammers.

I know many people use cloud storages to keep their private keys and other private data, I have done it also and never faced any problem, the only risk is if you access those at shared computers or someone else has access to your computer or device or somehow the hacker get to know your password then you can definitely lose your keys and assets.

Very nice warning, I can't even imagine myself storing my private keys or mnemonic phrase on cloud storage, can be breached by hackers. Best way I save my keys or phrase is by having a paper copy of it, kept safe in multiple locations where no one can access it. Well, there are risk attached to all forms of saving private keys or phrase, however storing on cloud storage is the worst option one should even think of. A friend mentioned keeping such files on Internxt storage, claiming its decentralized but this doesn't justify using it for private keys or mnemonics.

If you have a money to protect then its not worth the risk, use a good wallet and save the private keys on your own way but never to fully trust any cloud storage or any third party services. I personally write down my keys and store it in my safe box, so if something happen my family can still recover it. Though some of my information are on the cloud storage, and thankfully I’m still safe and my shit tokens are still safe, but it is indeed not advisable to do so.

When there's a strong security of access like authentication keys prior log in, I would recommend cloud storage for everybody. But for these era that's having more hackers, and the cloud storage site didn't have the features like key generator authentication I guess our funds will suffer the threatening situations. It should be put to a very secure access in order to prevent possible losses of your asset.

I think that you didn't even see if there were so many cases when people who have been storing their privatekey online have been getting stolen by the hackers. in another case there's a lot of people getting scammed caused by their desktop were getting hijacked by the scammers.
This is not an easy case for everyone to decide which method that will be used by them to store their sensitive information about their wallet.

I would be a liar if I do say that im not considering cloudstorages on putting up my keys but on the system I do make out for it not to be easily cracked is that
I do make up partitions into those keys which is divided into two parts which if ever one of the storage is compromised then it do still lacks the other half.

Well it is indeed a bad idea but I do love on storing it online yet accessing wont really be that hard once you are really in need and not to need to take your
HW to get those coins.

Of course I do still have HW which are really in purpose for long term and would never be touched but for active ones then I do store on a USB and cloud.

Does Cloud storage mean google drive or something else? We will never be secure until we own a hardware wallet. Your hard copy or print copy could be lost. In this way, you are safe everywhere, suppose cut 1 word or some number and save it in different cloud storage. No one knows the other mail and you should have hard copies.

From the beginning I knew crypto I always kept private keys or wallet backups in the cloud storage. There's no problem with that, there isn't a case where my crypto coin was lost. no cases of hacking. I thought it was safe and I will continue this. the way I save my private key or wallet backup is to use the rar file and give the password. and I also named something unrelated to crypto. this is a pretty powerful trick because hackers will usually skip files like this.

Cloudstore has been owning by another party and that means when you are storing your priv key there and i can say if you are giving your priv key to others.
Everyone should never try to keep their sensitive information into the place that we didn't know how secure it is. even if that was owned by google or big companies and that doesn't matter.
We should always think which is the best best to keep our priv key. So many cases google accounts getting hacked

yes it is not safe, but it's better than storing it on your Hard drive or smartphone. actually the problem of hacking mostly attacks PC and mobile devices. for cloud storage as long as you use quality like icloud or google drive i think it's safe. and most importantly always be careful not to install or download files from bad websites.

I happened to store my private key on my google cloud storage and also in my facebook messenger inbox in the past

Although my private key didn't got leak, i actually moved all my coins to another address with new set of private key because i can't risk
Yes, putting these into Cloud storage ease your work when you are looking to access it without finding where your private key is, is it on papers? or a note?

But i am not risking my hard earn money in that case
A one time leaking would result a full wipe of all the monies
Better be safe than never  ;D

Cloud storage isn't safe, but for the anywhere access people tend to save it on cloud without thinking of the later consequences. Cryptocurrency users have changed a lot, and as a part people are now much aware on the security of holding the private keys. It is always good to go find a better way to secure the private keys. In particular filing the security keys and placing it in a locker is good.

I am pretty sure that most people who create a new wallet, are given the seeds, where do you think they store those seeds? My guess is that they write it down on a piece of paper and store it in their desk (fairly safe - unless break-in), save it on their phone, send it to themselves in an email, or save it on their notepad on their PC (not smart). Hence people store it pretty much in very unsafe places and most of the time, nothing happens.

If you want to store it on some cloud storage, at least encrypt it with a long and strong password. If you do this properly then even if someone hacks your cloud storage, they will not waste their time crying to crack your text which can be nothing. However the issue here is obviosuly, what if you forget your password? And this has happened alot. Basically people in 2011-2012 bought BTC, saved it on their computer with a password in Bitcoin core and forgot about it in 2014 or 2017 when bitcoin mooned. Hence why there are password recovery services out there for this reason.

Using a two factor authentication and educate yourself on how to use this authentication is very important, safety of your private keys largely depends on how good you are and how educated you are in keeping things in order and fully aware on how scammers works to hack people's email, wallets and private keys, knowledge is still power when it comes to storing and securing your important files and assets.

Thank you for the warning. I find storing private keys online really annoying unless you aren't really regarding that key as important. I just thought, maybe those who stores private key in a cloud storage are those who gifts those private keys to someone? because I don't really know why people would store their private keys online.

Since 2018 I've been writing down my recovery seeds on a big note in my room and I have no problem wit my wallet so far, I'm living among those who don't even care about crypto technology and my room is my privacy where no one can just come in looking for anything, it's better to do the same before private keys are only safe offline

Some new crypto comers still repeat such mistakes and they go around on the web to open websites accounts with same password as their gmail, these websites now use the passwords they drop to try out their gmail account, the trust is gmail accounts can easily be jailbreak this days, it's safer to keep keys from any online source or storage

The term cold storage came from the fact that the coins are stored offline and putting your keys on cloud storage is not just foolish but as risky as using a web wallet because if you get hacked you will lose all your coins. From what I understood by cold storage was to write the private key on a paper and maybe duplicate it and store in 2 places so that if you somehow lose 1 you have the other and because they are stored offline you are safe from any kind of hacks apart from robbery maybe.

I never had enough coins to worry about cold storage but I do know that people who have big balance use cold storage wallets so yeah I have basic knowledge about it and actually cloud storage is fine if your cloud keys stored cold storage is like the link between your actual cold storage (the physical/offline one) and the hot wallet so you basically fund the wallet from offline and then send to the hot wallet.

Of course it is not safe, the safest place for your keys and passwords is your mind only. It is quite hard to remember all the private keys so you can write them down on the paper or use ledger wallet, etc. You should also have several backups in case you will lose one of them.

Your exchange wallet is not safe because now many phishing sites are always stalking us,
CEO Ledger has also lost funds because of phishing sites, have you heard of that?
this is one of the bad news and for me hackers nowadays are always trying to break into the security of exchanges and wallets, very terrible,
but for private wallets I'm sure the funds will be safe.

I agree. There are many people storing their private key on the internet which is not good at all. Hackers can easily manipulate your account and find the way to access your drive. It is quite easy right now. Moreover, many add-on installed are not trustful as you think and they can have malware or keyloggers. Therefore, never put your private key or any sort of that on cloud storage

Hardware wallets are a better solution. IF you do not have enough money, just save those things on your personal computer and remember to scan virus often.

It should be keep also in our files which is important to us especially if we plan to keep holding on our investment longer so if ever something happens it can also be access. Cloud storage is not safe but if we put some hidden code and remembers it's not belong in that phrase or line it will not be easily access by scammers.

The best place to save it is on a paper or on an external hard drive and with the possibility of renewal because all external technology has a possibility of failure, so it will be saved on several external hard drives (pen drive). Another interesting thing is to create passwords for the folders where the files are located. However, this can be relative and is not obligatory, after all, each person chooses their security.

Obviously, I think storing valuables, like private keys and others in the cloud is not recommended and even I don't like it at all. there are several potentials that can happen to cloud storage and the most common and also often happens is hacking

I never used cloud storage and I would never save my wallet keys online.
I only save it on notepads and keep a copy on my flashdrive.
I just don't feel secure about it even in keeping some of my old pictures.

i find that idea bad . why store them on a cloud storage when cloud storage arent created for that purpose but thats for the not sensitive files that are huge and cant be fit on your device .

password andd keys are not less that a kilobyte in size to consume your device storage and there are so many way to back up them but in a much safer way than storing them online .

there could be people that are insane to do that but they can be safe if they use trusted could storage and not those random cloud storage found online  and lastly how can hackers search for a cloud storage files online when its supposed to be private  . it also have a password

Yes, any online platform does not have a good level of security. Our users' information is very important to them and they make a profit on collecting our information for sale. So for your crypto assets, you should invest a little more money to make it safer and make sure no one can attack.
Buy a cold wallet (Trezor) instead of writing it down and storing it. Storing on writing paper is also not safe because you can either leave it in a corner or get bitten by rats :)

I have moved every of my private keys based funds to a seed phrase based wallet. I started writing all of my seed phrases on two different diaries and have stored them on two different places. One lies with my parents while another is where I live. They know it contains value but my parents and siblings are not well introduced to crypto so I've asked a friend of mine to assist them cashout if anything happens with me.

I never like the idea of storing any valuable info online like gmail or cloud storage because they are easily hacked, if it's a must to use email to store private keys then create a special email address for this and use 2FA to lock the mail, don't use the email for signing up websites

Store your keys offline, it's more safer this way than using any online storage to store your keys, online is full of malicious softwares and scammers are always trying to jailbreak something through any means, either by infecting your PC and using phishing skills, writing seed in paper is more safer don't throw away your hard earned money to scammers

External hard drive can die on you anytime unless you don't use it after storing the keys on the hard drive, it's more safer to store in a ledger book or carve the words on silver steel and keep in your wardrobe, I do this and it makes me sleep at nights

If your email is still not visible then it is okay, people usually break into email because our email has already been shared,
and hackers take advantage of it, like you get an email about an exchange,
or an email about an online wallet, just avoid it and don't let you open it.

True, if you don't go around using that same email you stored your keys on you won't have any problem as scammers can only target emails that they know about, this days people even sell millions of emails online for money, but I still consider paper over this method

Obviously cloud storage is someone else and not you, which means you are not at the control of your own keys and as long as you do not own it yourself you are not going to like it when hackers come knocking at the door. When you use your own computer or better yet if you use something like a ledger nano or trezor so that you could have a bigger control even without having any specific PC, that would allow you to be in charge a lot better.

I would say this depends on how much crypto you own, if you own under 100 bucks you should not care about any of this because hackers do not care about that type of small amounts unless it is incredibly easy to get it, but if you own more than 1k+ you should definitely reconsider and switch to something more safe and secure.

Losing that paper is a risk for sure and there are chances that the alphabets are erased or not readable which would mean you lose the coins because the private key is so long you cannot guess alphabets if like 2-3 are missing or erased.

People might store on cloud and still remain safe if they are smart and use basic encryption like reverse the order of the key and save it such that if a hacker ever gets the key they still don't know how to redeem it. You can also do basic manual encryption like replacing alphabet "a" with "x" and something like that such that only you know the secret.

Storing your private keys on a cloud storage is not recommended and if ever that you already placed it on some of it then I think the risk of being hacked is already there, the cloud storage platform had an access to it even if you delete it. You cannot trust digital platforms for this, your self is the only human you can trust with your private keys. Vital information like this should not be placed anywhere.

Online place isn't the safe way to save your Private Key/Wallets. Better you save it to Notepad/other text file and move to your Flashdisk or phone.
With this tips now i my wallet never get scammed.

Will deleting those files they have solved this?

I think the cloud storage already copied their file to another storage for safer storage so it would be too late for those who had uploaded there. You might just have to log in to the wallets and move to a new wallet that you own. Never upload anything that has your data particularly private keys.

I agree with all the steps above but don't you think it is easier to just save it offline instead of applying so many filters and formulas that some day you might yourself forget about them.

Cold storage are meant to be for long time and you cannot remember the email you used, the encryption you used fr years and it would be locking yourself out of your own coins.

There is another better way which some people use basically they have a separate computer where they don't use anything and only use it to download a bitcoin wallet like electrum and you are safe since you don't do online surfing and all with that so you can't get hacked.

it is more convenient to save your code on paper. what i would do is just generate codes offline until you see a recognizable word for you, and then replace it with something you know yourself. if you see eg USA in the code, then replace it with TED. That is remembered. i have to admit it takes some work to be embarrassed until you have something useful.

Do you even know how secure Cloud servers are? If the development of Blockchain is already secure, the addition of Cloud Security makes it better. Having a breach within a Cloud Server would be hard since there would be multiple securities installed not only on the Outsourcing side but also on the Customers side. It would only fail if the customers fail to comply on how to properly secure their private keys.

If you decided to expose your private keys to third party then good luck, when you lose all your money. People need to learn and understand that protecting their Crypo asset should be their number priority, if you make money and you can't protect it, you will end up losing everything you make

Yes, first of all, you need to store private keys from wallets in a safe place in paper form.  Then I prefer memory cards and all kinds of hard drives.  However, disks are not very reliable, not even from the point of view of the fact that they can be demagnetized or fail in another way.  When using information from them, you need to copy it, and this can also be dangerous.  I almost always enter my private key data manually.
 Cloud storage is very unreliable.  Initially, I kept the keys to the wallets in the MEGA cloud storage, and they were all stolen by persons who had access to this information on the service.

Private keys should be keep like you would keep your bank details e.g credit debit cards, private keys are the keys to your cribs, if you can't keep them offline you are playing with fire, it's better to write down on paper instead on pasting in emails

Perhaps Cloud storage is used by precisely those cryptocurrency users who generally have no paper at hand or an alternative place to store their secret information. Such a situation is difficult to imagine, because it should resemble a situation when a person travels light in the Amazon jungle and apart from a backpack with personal belongings and a netbook with which he can trade cryptocurrency at night, he has nothing else.  ;D
 I believe that for every cryptocurrency user, you need to take seriously the safety of their secret information in order to keep their assets safe and sound.

There are so many cases of my friends storing private keys in cloud storage, many of them are broken and few are still safe, the factor of the lack of a level of security is what is easy to break
indeed it is not very recommended to store in cloud storage for the type of person who is lazy to improve the security of their own private key, keep the private key private and secure in the sense that it is safe for yourself

You should not ever do it. Yes, the risk that exactly you will be hacked is pretty low, but it exists. Better keep it yourself. Make 2-3 copies of the wallet keys and put them in different places you know as the safest ones. It will be the best decision.

It sucks to know that many of your friends store their private keys on cloud storage, I mean are they new to crypto and do not understand the risk associated with that mode of storing private keys? Be it decentralized storage like Internxt or centralized storage like google drive, none is wise to use. Some people do not want to learn from others mistakes but from experience, imagine losing funds after storing sensitive data like private keys or mnemonic phrase on the internet, whether online storage or email(which is worst), no body needs to advise you next time to apply caution when storing your private keys.

I never ever store my valuable data on cloud storage but sometimes I use this choice as a backup. For making multiple copies of the same data, cloud storage is a safe variant but for strengthening the security of private keys the cloud storage is my last choice. Better to avoid rather than thinking about this. The convenient ways are listed by other users, just choose one and you are good to go.

Write it down also so risky and I will say this is very risky?? What about if burn on fire, or flood, etc. This is riskier than store it online.
I agree if cloud storage is not safe but we can add security like archive and password. Even they get it down but they can't open it. Or you can change the extension file, be jpg will manipulate everything

Many kinds of ways to secure it in online storage, just google it

Maybe I'm safe from cloud storage. I don't believe in any cloud storage but I like store keys in different places, just not in one. We also have the same equal problem in the hardware wallet. Hardware wallet could damage or be lost. Others mail could protect you from others advice, right?

This is a major problem i see in many investors, many store the coins in exchanges even though they had many examples about the vulnerability when the exchange gets hacked and still some will continue those practices and storing keys in cloud is another blunder.

Storing in multiple places is not a bad idea but the most important aspect is to keep them secure.

Private keys should be even more secure. More like your password than your card details.

Knowing your card number a thief can make a transaction but this transaction will be small because most people have limits on their cards and would require a pin code for a larger transaction.

Knowing your private key they can drain your wallet to 0 without any pins or numbers.

Storing in the cloud is stupid.  

I think there is a lot of cloud storage and the question is cloud storage available on the Google platform, can't trust the cloud from Google? because until now Google is the largest platform that has high trust, to be honest until now it has stored several keys in several places, one of which is Google and Telegram which can store special files for keys.

Very good advice, it is true that storing private keys in cloud data storage is a bad choice. Because many people have experienced
their private keys hacked successfully, and lost all the coins they have,  because hackers managed to steal them from cloud data storage.
I prefer to use the old method by writing private keys on a piece of paper, and stored in a safe place and only I know about it.

Priv key was different from the credit or debit card. Privkey is a representation as a key to open your wallet and when this can be stolen by the scammer or hacker and that means you will be losing a lot of your money from there.
There's no also a regulation about this and that's why it's quite different with the debit or credit card.
When you are making a new wallet and you will always get a paper wallet for your privkey but this has only happened in ethereum wallet.

if you know how to properly encrypt your files, you are safe doing this, there are risks on both options, awareness is always the key if you don't want your files and private keys to get compromised, part of storing your important details is how scammers looked for it and how to expose it, you should know how they attack your files.

You should not store anything important on the internet, if there are stuff on the internet then it's pretty much searchable. Just imagine hackers finding your private key or any precious stuff in general and use it for their own needs, that would be a disaster. If you have something precious to store, please store it in offline safe or write it on a piece of paper.

Are you talking about storing your keys/seed via google drive or dropbox and just typing the seed there or putting a wordpad document on it? 


Or do you mean... writing it down on notepad or say type it in a program like lastpass/keypass and make sure it has a password on it?  Obviously this one is more second because if email get hacked... hacker stilll needs your password to your notepad document if you encrypt it or need your password for lastpass/keypass right?

There are many members of the crypto community who entered into it without making little steps of due diligence and research first. Knowledge in cryptocurrency safekeeping is a must. It must be understood and known even before they decide to buy their first cryptocurrencies. It is as important as understanding Bitcoin and cryptocurrency themselves. And one of the most basic in the dos and donts of keeping private keys is not to store it online.

as long as you keep it safe, I think it's fine. cloud storage helps as the last backup, in case of problems with our PC or smartphone. the way to be safe always put it in Rar and give a password. never give out names such as private keys, backup wallets, or others. hackers usually always look for files with such names. so avoid giving too familiar file names

Encrypting it isn't good enough?

Yes, it seems like everyone has long understood that if you want to keep something completely safe, you need to store it outside of Internet access. Especially super-important passwords or keys. Is not it so? Any storage connected to the network can be hacked and take everything that is there. You can hack any exchange, hijack any account, and in General, you can get your hands on everything that is connected to the Internet-even your cardiograph, having access to it via wifi through your smart kettle. Yes it can lead to digital paranoia but you will be completely safe.