Bitcoin Forum

It has come to my attention, that people are starting to lose their passwords/wallets/access to bitcoin more and more often. They are either idiots or careless or just naive, but this really needs to stop.

Just today I see at least 5 reports of people losing their wallets, frequently in the wallet subforum but also on reddit. Of course economically speaking this is good for the rest of us, because the money velocity slows down making our coins more valuable, but it also makes newbie integration very unfriendly.

Really if we want bitcoin to be global, we need to make newbies more comfortable with bitcoin. Many people are irresponsible, so we need to warn them of the consequences, because they never read the fine print.

---

My suggestion:

1) Everyone more experienced with BTC should write tutorials for newbies and give them out for free for newbies, that will teach them how to start out in bitcoin, and what risks they need to consider. Highlighting important topics like backing up wallets, and passwords, and also keeping their systems safe from malware.

2) Every wallet software should integrate a warning window warning users to backup their wallets and passwords before creating the wallet. The warning should be in big red letters , so that newbies can see it, and this might make them realize that it is important for example:


3) A pinned thread on the Beginners & Help section warning users to backup their wallets & passwords

4) Bitcoin.org and wallet websites should also tell newbies to backup their stuff.

---

Consequences:

If we don't make bitcoiners more responsible, then they will demand the existance of "bitcoin banks" that will store their bitcoins for them "safely".

If the newbies cannot be responsible, then they will hand over the control over their coins to middleman, centralized wallets, and we will accomplish nothing.

Bitcoin banks will be born,and the same fractional reserve shit will start over again. So it is in our interest to make people responsible, to keep bitcoin decentralized.

And if more trendy leftist people join bitcoin, they usually have 0 responsibility, and always come with the demands.

People are either self-governed, or others will govern them. If they can't store their money, other will store it ,and then the fractional reserve cancer will come into bitcoin as well.

We really dont need that. The flaw is in people not in the currency.

So the only option is to educate people to be more responsible.

---

Also you might not want to reveal how you store your private keys online ,so just edit that post.

people have been losing their passwords for as long as passwords exist, and it is neither limited to bitcoin nor limited to internet.

why do you think most of the people use passwords like "123", "abcd", or their brithdays? because they lose/forget their passwords all the time. whether it is the password to open their physical lock or it is for their bitcoin wallet.

creating tutorials never change anything in this case.

People forgetting passwords is certainly a problem. However I really doubt that any educational campaigns will be able to solve it. There already is a ton of information and tips on data security available, yet people are not paying much attention. Sadly, safekeeping of personal and financial data is a learning process that is triggered by bad experiences. In turn, some people will ask third parties for help, others will adjust their own behavior.

Regardless of user-related problems with the security of funds, I don't think that banks will be able to maintain their dominant position when Bitcoin becomes a major currency. Today's fiat fractional (or zero) reserve system is a legalized process. Quite ironically the same is not true when banks do the same with Bitcoin - it will be considered financial fraud. The simple reason is that Bitcoin is not subjected to state monetary policy. Money creation with Bitcoin happens outside the regime of central banks.

ya.ya.yo!

I agree with you.
In fact, it's still obvious that old people prefer offline banking and finance and don't want to use Internet banking, online payments etc.
It's sad that even middle and younger age people don't understand fully benefits of Internet banking or online payments and also they are often not careful enough with their online passwords, online security etc.
It seems that we should teach people about Internet security already in the school.
I guess that some people are more careful about security and some less and it's probably depends on character of the person.

I think he is safe, those tokens have secret order of alignment, doubt that its easy to guess.
Cleaver idea by the way. Good to know that some people know how to have a little fun in life, even with money.
You couldn't resist of throwing politics in to this subject, didn't you?  ::)
Unfortunately this is true, people as a whole are generally stupid, uninformed and more users equals to more problems, obvious.
Warning idea seems good, but if someone is careless, greedy and unaware of his doings than I bet not even the best tutorials or big ass warnings will save him from loosing coins.    

I can't say a lot of people is using a password like "123","ABC', or their birthdays because they lose or forget the passwords all the time but, they just searching about the simple passwords and it's easy to remember.

The only way is to make a tutorial implemented in the actual wallets, before you use the wallet, it would explain you how to do it an secure your stuff. You have for example Electrum doing a good job with this, it tells you to save the seed and stuff.

all the wallets have some kind of warning that pops up and tells the user to backup and/or encrypt the wallet with a strong password.
besides i don't think making a tutorial or a pinned thread on the Beginners & Help section changes anything, because it is their money and those who are wise enough will think of making a backup and reading those warnings in the wallets themeselves.
and only those who are not so wise won't do that and when they have lost their money they will start searching about what happened and what they can do now!

i have to admit that i am a naive careless idiot because ive lost my wallet before but if anything its been a great learning experience and im pretty sure i wont make that mistake again. Nowadays i like to use different wallets the like of mycellium which forces you to write down your seed before you can continue as you have to type in the seed after its shown. After my first loss of a wallet its improved my security 10 fold.

I think this is always worth mentioning. People seem to forget that there is no bitcoin incorporated or bank to help you do security. If you are doing it correctly, then you are the only one in charge of security.  It's sad to see posts asking for the bitcoin "master key" or to have their account "reset".

If you lose access to your private key then no one on Earth can help. Not the NSA, not Satoshi Nakamoto, nobody.

ATM and banks dont say us how to manage the account, how to store the card and/or how to store our money... like you already said:
So, doesnt matter what we try to do, these retards will always lose money.
And just to clarify, i do agree some services need more warnings and other helps, but a wallet doesnt seem the case.

That would be an overkill, its enough to warn the user once, if he doesnt listen, then its a futile for that person.


Better than nothing.


Not very visible. I havent seen any reference to wallet security there.


Still its our task to make bitcoin userfriendly.  Otherwise they will leave and start mocking bitcoin, stupid people can never admit their faults they always blame something else.

But bitcoin should not be a target for trolls, so we must be professional and helpful to newcomers.


Actually they do, i got a user manual when i opened a bank account for first time at a bank.

And ATM's have a help page in them where you can read how to use it.

Actually centralized wallets are not  much safer for the newbies, without hardware walets like trezor or keepkey you cant make the use of Bitcoin safe for the masses. Current centralized wallets F2A is not good enought, and many Bitcoins are stealed from these services.

I'm not worried about their security, that can eventually improve. I'm worried about fractional reserve system on exchanges.

Hardware wallets might be too expensive for newbies living in poor countries, especially those joining from africa or SE asia

These days wallets have provided increased security features, so to retain their wallet even when password were lost. Possibly every small portion lost got lost from wallets have added a big volume under the lost list, which have some impact on the circulation.

The fractional reserve practices will not be done with bitcoin, because banks loaned money recklessly and the whole fiat banking system was developed to create this type of problem. Bitcoin has no reserve and

they do not manipulate the supply, so there is no threat of that happening in Bitcoin, if people start using centralized service to access their coins. While you hold the only private key to your Bitcoin stash, you

are the sole owner of these coins. I agree with you on one thing... people should be educated on password safety and how important private keys are.  ;)

I use block.io wallet i want to know is it safe to use.I use it because its pretty easy for me.
Can anyone tell me if this wallet is good or not...
if not then which wallet..

When i was brand new to bitcoin, circa 2011-12, I had my bitcoins on a flash drive. Needless to say i put it through the washer. I was devastated. I came back though, and now make sure that i evenly distribute amongst a few separate wallets. These days though, I've been moving to fiat currency and I'm financing a new boat engine.. ;)

Well when my computer burned it took with it 0,03btc it were a big ammount, im glad my main wallet is present at blockchain, thats online wallet, soo i trust those, i dont trust those we have to install, im afraid to open some bad page that give acess to my documents, and steall the words....
But sure this is a huge problem as people arent taken the right measures as i havent done the seed, soo coins lost forever.

Block.io is a web wallet and its not the best option to use a web wallet. One should use a desktop wallet like Multibit or Electrum. They offer better security for your bitcoins but is up to you as a user to safeguard them the best way possible. By using these kind of wallets you don't need to enter your data , username and password every time like in block.io minimizing the risk of getting your coins lost.

if you lose it in blockchain, I guess it will never go back, I never lost the address wallet my blockchain, and what, to this day I do not know it, and after it happened, I made a wallet new and secure all the information on it, I think you also have to do my friend, before it happens to you

Unfortunately you can't help everyone and teach people how to manage their money. They must learn the hard way.
Frequent loss of password or trouble with private keys exporting/importing was a reason HD wallets were born. But it still is not enough for some users.
Even though deterministic wallets  are much easier for users to manage, mishaps are still happening. And always will be.

Have encrypted backups of your file with passwords... write them down using a code that only you know so that if someone gets access to the file they still can't use your passwords... store your backups them at 2 or more cloud backup providers (mega.nz, spideroak, there are many others). If anything happens to your computer you'll be able to restor your wallet (Electrum is a good one) on a new computer.

Its not a one way handshake.Bitcoin is still in its primary stages,it doesn't have the necessity to be utilized by every average mind.The demand arises when you're going shopping for example  and there's a special offer for people paying with bitcoins,in that scenario you can see it needs to have a fancy UI with a mini booklet on how to use bitcoins or back-up your wallets.Most of these wallet key-phrase or access losers are those  who'd wish to get rich in one day by trading/gambling.Due to irresponsibility of not reading the documentation or say FAQ,they tend to lose the coins.What more you accept the software to do ? Like Freeze the computer screen and forcefully give electric shocks to people if they haven't written their private phrase on a paper ? I don't think so.People are over confident and take the system warnings lightly.

Another issue that I see to bitcoin users are that they do not make regular backups.
If you haven't done the latest backup then you can lose all the money if the funds have been moved to another address on that wallet.

I would assume most of them are just ew to the system and others can be just too naive like you said. They want a word printed in red and gigantic size that says "Do no share your personal information to anyone. Do not lose your passpharse. Provide more ways to ensure more security to your account. Use Two-Factor Authentication." Some people say they'll do it later but its best to do it now before its too late.

Recently I saw that when you install adobe flash it installs mcafee antivirus and with it a program from Intel called Truekey. It is a password program that allows to remember you passwords for you.

Tanks for that suggestions they are really beneficial and will help in awareness in that matter.

But every person who is aware wit the account system anywhere will now well that more strong password have more chances to forget from our mind, so they should have to write them in their diary. I also doing the same I have my diary and i write all the data about any account I open in any wallet or exchange etc.

Not sure this is a solvable problem.

With the move away from desktops, to laptops, to tablets, to phones (that are easy to lose, have stolen, break, trade in every 2 years) etc. the average person has no chance. And, what about users who do not even own a computer and must use internet cafe, How are they to keep a secure wallet?

This is one reason why I LOL when others post on these forums that BTC is the simplest, easiest to use, safest, most secure thing going. All that more than credit cards, debit cards, banks, Paypal, etc.

The difference here between credit cards, PayPal and bitcoin are that you have someone upper you that take care of the security (not at all), so if they see something suspicious they lock your cards and contact you, but in bitcoin you are the only owner and you are responsible about your coins so once you lost them you can't get them back.

Just use strong password and you have the first step taken care of. If you know how to use bitcoin and stay safe, it really is the best thing, and if you can't,
then that means you wouldnt be better even with cc's and pp anyways.
In regards to people that dont own computers - they prolly have smartphone atleast, and if not, then they are irrelevant to bitcoin world imo.

Its not a bitcoin problem or a newbies problem, its a general problem, users don't take care of passwords and backups of important files on its computer too. I had to restore computers from friends with virus or broken operative system, and always the same problem, they didn't made a backup of important files.
Its good to make warnings on wallets, but i think that most users will not take care of it.

Exactly, basically you own your bitcoin only if you own the corresponding private key of the address(es)



In general:  some people don't care about their security. As you said it's not a problem of the technology itself (Bitcoin) but it's a human problem, they should change their mentality ... remember 'be your own bank'.

why you should need to do regular backups? i mean if your money just sits in one wallet theres no need to backup the same private key over and over again

I have made an excel file with all of my passwords/usernames/emails are stored in it.
It has over 100+ passwords from different site.
The best way is create a excel file if you don't have excel then create a new simple document. Whenever you creates a new account just save your info in it. After doing that upload it somewhere else like Dropbox etc or send it to one of your email.
about wallets if you are using blockchain wallet then use your nick as identifier by doing this at least you don't lose your identifier. Note down your password somewhere safe.
My private keys of all addresses (which i use) are stored in my mobile/gmail/dropbox and i have printed my passwords/priv keys on paper and the paper is saved in locker.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.
Strong password is of no help when you lose you wallet for whatever reason. The OP is about losing passwords and wallets.

Many people use CC and PP everyday who would not be able to handle bitcoin.

I see you ignored those who want to use BTC but don't own computers of whatever kind. I see talk around here about having every person alive using BTC, ending poverty because of BTC, etc. and you just blew off what half, or more, of the people on earth.



[/quote]

Just use strong password and you have the first step taken care of. If you know how to use bitcoin and stay safe, it really is the best thing, and if you can't,
then that means you wouldnt be better even with cc's and pp anyways.
In regards to people that dont own computers - they prolly have smartphone atleast, and if not, then they are irrelevant to bitcoin world imo.
[/quote]

alot of people ain't too bright and shouldn't be trusted to cross the road unaccompanied, let alone secure their own money. that's how the world is and always will be.

i think many people entrusting coins to services is borderline inevitable but they may not be banks as we know them. most go through their lives looking for others to do the hard work. bitcoin ain't gonna change that in a hurry.

Well, until the underlying technology becomes a little consumer friendly, there will always be the issue of people losing coins. It may not seem like that to the everyday technical user because we are bias in our own ways.

That reason alone is why I keep my mouth shut when users are being bashed for using a web wallet. Why would I try to scare away new users away from bitcoin when they may not fully understand the technology. Until one becomes experienced, its a scare thought. Then you have the stories about hacks etc. If I wasn't around from the yester years and heard some of the stories, id run.

Well the first question is, did they really lose their wallet? Did they really forgot their password or someone hacked their account.. Because for sure, if they have bitcoins in that wallet, they will find ways not to forgot their account since it is their hard earned money that is in their account. But it should serves as a lesson to each and everyone of us. We should do our best to make our bitcoin wallet secured.

Everyone should get a trezor if they want to keep their funds safe. I would love to see a lastpass service style from Google.

Bad idea! Tutorials are available already, and most Bitcoin users don't have enough understanding of the concept to be able to write tutorials.
Showing tutorials on the other hand is a good idea, but if people are spending money on things they don't understand, it's just a life lesson to them if they lose money.

People got used to it being okay to lose passwords. Any email provider nowadays has recovery options, and many people need that too. Banks are the same.Many people rely on password recoveries.
Data loss is no different: many people lose their precious photos when their computer breaks down. If they don't understand how to make proper backups there, how can they understand how to handle Bitcoin?

The best to remember your password is to keep your dear one name or date of birth.

And that is also one of the easiest ways to hack your account, by using easy to remember passwords. Passwords must be changed every now and then and a two-step verification / authentication adds another level of security.

this is true, many of us trying to use same password for almost account, even on emails, and this will make easiest ways for hacker to predict or brute force your passwords. there are many ways to keep save your passwords, for example, write on notepad, make a copy into your android or pc that only you will know that place of notepad, or even upload your password into your cloud data like gdrive. i am agree to use two-step verification, and using send keys into emails, just to make sure our account is keep safe, althought there are no safe place.

Apparently people don't backup their computers either. :D

If someone lost his wallet. it is his own fault. so even if they use something like bank to store their btc, it is their choice. and this is not new, we already have online wallets that they are centralized completely like banks like xapo and coinbase
this is how bitcoin freedom works. every one is responsible for his btc and he can do whatever he wants with it

Buying a trezor just adds extra costs while you can simply store the backups of your wallet files in USB sticks and external HDD's. Everyone has USB sticks and external HDD's somewhere in house. And on top of that you can also create a paper wallet that you can hide in several places in your house.

your definitely right, I need to get better at storing my bitcoins. I have some on a paper wallet that im keeping for good but I mainly store all
my coins online in fear of my computer breaking or something happening. I need to do the research and store it properly instead of keeping all
my btc in online places like gambling sites. I spread it out but need to be better.

You still don't get the point.Backing up is easy,people often lose access to it.Take your USB stick for example,what if you lose the USB stick ? Or your external hard drive is damaged physically ?At such instances,all you can do is regret.The question is not about storing the coins safely but at least having an access to them while your one part of the software stops working.Backing wallet.dat on your hard drive is not a problem if you're very sure of your internet sources.

But sometimes people use a number of wallets and using the simple names for different accounts is also hack-able, a least people who will know you will be able to guess your details, the best idea s that keep a written record of your complex passwords etc.

At this stage of its price it is an unresponsible way to lose it or just forget it. If you know how valuable a think you have in hand you will take care of it. It will too much stupidity to lose it or they have some kind of sickness.

complex password mean nothing if the hackers gets your data from phishing,even you have 100 sensitive characters with symbol,it'll be leaked at the end without any effort to bruteforce it

I 've made ​​a wallet in blockchain but what happens when I open an account blockchain was not able to enter . I never lost wallets address blockchain but until now I can not open and did not know what to do . once that happens I try to create a new wallet and secure all information about it all .
I think you also have to provide security to no longer lose the account / address bitcoin , before it happens.

Frankly speaking every online and mobile Bitcoin wallet that I have ever used usually prompts me about backing up my master seed key right after I have registered a new account there and by the way the Blockchain wallet even prompts users to back up/write down the mnemonic words right in the process of creating an account so there is literally no excuse for anyone losing their passwords or private keys. Plus it's a common thing to back up our most important files to external drives/usb sticks so why not do the same thing for our Bitcoin wallets too? I say this is pure negligence and laziness.

Don't you have email address integrated with your blockchain wallet from which you can easily recover your password and its very recommended to use 2FA option in security to protect your wallet from different hacks and all !

I believe it that there should be an information dissimation on the use of bitcoins for newbies. But the best way to introduce it to people is to make a course in the school curriculum about cryptocurrency especially the use of bitcoin including security protocols that one should observe to avoid their wallets and btc missing.

if you have lose your bitcoin account password then you can easily recover it from using your email. but if yo lost your wallet password then it is little difficult to recover it. i think you must be careful about your bitcoin as well as your wallet accounts address.

I always put the things that i cannot lose in a protected file on my computer, and a printed version of it in a secure suitcase.

Do you carry it around wearing sunglasses? That is the real question.

People are too lazy! There are already enough warning and guidelines on how to secure the wallet.  People are just to confident on their computer securities and neve think that crashes may happen anytime.   During the creation of wallet there is enough reminder about the securities and private key that they have to secure.

That's why it is suggested to import private key of every bitcoin address you have in your online wallet. Blockchain.info atleast provide this feature, if you hold private key of bitcoin address you use with your wallet than even when that online wallet go down you can easily spend your bitcoin adding that address to wallet provider like electrum.

There are better chances that blockchain.info/hackers could import the same private keys in their wallets.How hard is it to leak the passwords anyway they have been Ddos'd like a 10 times before.It never safer to trust online wallets with your private keys or bitcoins.

You are right, when I was going to sign up to the blockchain.info, I was advised that if I lost my wallet password then I will lose access to my coins, I think blockchain.info wallet password is unable to recover.

Yea I corrected it, only experienced people should write them, the least thing we need is misleading or wrong info.

It is, so you should make sure to follow their instruction. if you got 2FA their support sometimes feel the need to help you more.
But still you are dealing with money, so it's your first responsibility to make sure you protect your money first.

This. People will just not learn and will get burned.

Sorry for your loss, but yes wallets have become better and better and now offer recovery seeds. Still not enough to prepare the majority of users though.

So a more visual warning would be required.


I`m sorry that we have to dumb down bitcoin to the level of 5 year olds, but that is just how the mainstream people are.

Mainstream adults have literally the mentality of 5 year olds, so if bitcoin were to go mainstream, that also implies that we will get tons of dumb people using something they dont understand.


They pretty much do, wallet recovery services are only 33% effective, and most mainstream users dont have enough funds to be worth to recover the password from scraps.

Those below the treshhold are in a bad position, but at least they lose small amounts, hopefully less and less as they learn more in the future.


Not enough, the wiki page i doubt is read by many newbies.

The simple solution is wallet based tutorials, or a help page in every wallet software, and a warning before creating wallets to do the proper procedures of securing it.

Not all wallets remind people, or the reminder is not visual enough.

Remember the average mainstreamer has an IQ of 90, which is slightly  more than of a chimpanzee, so you have to dumb it down like if you were talking to a toddler.

yes people loses their wallet password and some time wallets keys. i think that are not good for them. and they have to be careful. ye s not doubt that still people may not be able to use your wallet account haing wallet but still  it is not so safe.

LOL
you are the MVP.

a ddos has no correlation to insecurities of a service. Its meant to impede services and cause interruptions.

It's really carelessness and silly to not remember the passwords or store it somewhere to recover the account. Also, blockchain needs to let users access their account in another way (like providing some kind of proof like FB does) in case one forgets his/her password else now it's almost impossible to recover coins from a wallet without a password. Coinbase/Xapo do not provide private keys but still there are ways to recover your account. It's also necessary that these users have their private key store in a physical form to be on the safe side.

the problem is not with people losing bitcoin passwords the problem is that bitcoin is not that noob friendly, as a community we need to find more user friendly ways of using bitcoin, like seriously, addresses and privatekeys need to dissapper into the background, before bitcoin will ever go main stream.

We need something called a floating address, or 'vanity address' Something that a user can remember, but ultimately is tied to several addresses. Coinbase is trying to implement something based on emails, however it is not recognized network wide.

What are you talking about, people are losing their wallet files not their priv keys.

You need to remember a password and keep a backup of the wallet file, you dont need to memorize a private key (although that would be optimal)

Just look at the latest examples of people losing access to their coins:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1562979.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1547068.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1554373.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1562706.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1524197.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1556554.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85495.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1560387.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1557122.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1543878.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1550808.0

And the list goes on....

---

So don't cry to me that bitcoin will become centralized, when all these people will use 3RD party banks to store their bitcoins...

There are many problems. For 1 we need people to use a hard passphrase.
And also people should protect their pc or mac better, so trojan or wallet stealers can't be executed.

yeah. the problem is on the person who has the password. if they really care about his/her wallet, he/she will keep their password safe. so our job is to warn them.

I agree with OP's suggestion to make a warning thread on newbie section.

Correct. It is only a sign that they cannot handle excessive loads well enough. However, there were several security lapse due to their incompetence.

Please, never import any private keys into online wallets. Online wallets are generally unsafe since they are "online". Even though the older version of Blockchain.info wallet stores the private keys encrypted on their server, it is still dangerous since the password can be weak. Just write the key down somewhere if you want to be safe.

Some bitcoin wallet need to regulrarly make backups because when you make a transaction from A to B you can see that was made also to C (which is a new address in your wallet). Not doing regularly backups can be fatal.

I think best way to save bitcoin wallet from hackers is:
1.When someone send you link for bitcoin wallet login place just dont go to login because it ia philishing site.
2.Download antivirus and scan your device everyday.
3.Dont register to sites which dont have https because if you type same password like in bitcoin wallet they can try to login to every online wallet and they will be aviliable to stole funds.
4.Dont register in facebook apps where you can earn money because it is philishing site on facebook.One time somebody was send me link like that and i was write in email KissMyAss and in password SmokeMyDick and then register and it opened me site with just some stupis ads but it was write in fb app that it s faucet where yoz can earn easy 0.01 btc everyday.

pity if someone takes bitcoin wallet contained within that you have, when BTC was you collected with difficulty. I think you have to be careful every login, maybe you're wrong entered the address, because maybe it was a phishing site that could take password. to prevent the loss of your password, it helps you put 2FA in an account that you have, maybe it was enough to help

That is why you dont keep all your coins in 1 place.

You keep most of your coins in a safe storage or hardware wallet, and you keep a small % of your coins in a hot wallet for spending.

I think this is good thing that someone from here wish to warn newbies in bitcoin about possible problems with wallet and passwords. People should be very careful about this things, cause when it happens its already late to do anything. So people should be smart and read topics about this matter very carefully. From beginning I spent hours here in reading how people scammed other people, and I saw many crazy situations.
Just I think there will be always people who will lose things, its just the way it is. We can`t do nothing about it.

There are bitcoins that are constantly being lost forever because of lost private keys. It can also happen when someone makes a mistake and sends coins to the wrong unused address. Also, people may die and no one know they have bitcoin or they don't know haw to access them.

Those are accidents, nobody can foresee those.

But here I'm talking about carelessness, and irresponsibility, that are most likely caused by lack of education or by a stupid belief that "nothing can go bad".

If a person dies and nobody knows his private keys, the other bitcoiners are the inheritors of his coins's value (since he didnt give his coins to anyone else).

People are loosing passwords and wallets not only on the net, in real life also. That is something in our nature and nobody protected from this. What to tell about some electron wallets?! This world is full of hackers and cyber gineous. If I would have lot of bitcoin I would be afraid for it very much to someone scam me and stole it. So I would withdraw it every time when I would have some bitcoin profit. 

Before i lost one of my wallet where i save 0.23 btc inside in electrum the copy pasted seeds i forgot where i place it or maybe i deleted it.
But the wallet.dat still in the appdata folder but the problem is the password.. if i reset it in electrum or restore again the problem is electrum asking for a seed.. its a 1 year ago. i just for got it right now never backup the wallet. dat
Now i learn because of this i save wallet password and seeds.. for future if my computer are crash or something and im i right that i save those important thing because i experience of many malware and virus in my laptop and format it use those backup and my wallet is alive again.

So that means that we should not protect against them, and teach others to do the same?

There are many viruses in the world, that doesnt mean you should not take your daily vitamin dose.

Electrum wallet is very very good and safe to use. You can write down the seed in 2-3 parts, put it in 3 different capsules and bury it in your garden in 3 secret locations for example.

So, does it's important to adopt the mixing system to keep the bitcoin in various place to secure the amount? and it's impossible for safe storage or hardware wallet getting hacking?

There is no perfect security, but a hardware wallet is millions of times safer than leaving the coins on your phone.

If you are not sure how to safely keep your bitcoins, then definitely buy a hardware wallet.

Negligence is one thing thats why we lose money/btc. Every time we must think what are the possible things that would happen to our btc in any circumstances we should make back up or seed on our wallet in case of emergencies because we wont know what would happen tomorrow. So we have a piece of mind that our money is safe either hardware/online wallet.

Negligence is the worst.

More people have lost their money from negligence than all hacks and thefts combined.

Which is why there is a need for an educational campaign on keeping their wallets secure. But of course, this isn't going to be 'that' successful either because of the same reason. Negligence.

People would tend to think that their wallet is secure enough that they wouldn't want to join this and learn things from it and its just going to be too late for them to truly realize their vulnerability.

a very thoughtful idea and movement, but maybe if you could do all of the tutorials your self since you already did most of them in first post? also they should be at the most visited bitcoin related web pages like bitcoin.org?

The hardware wallets are safer than phone, and on top of that they come up with paper sheet where you have to write down the 12 or 24 words when you initializing your hardware wallet. I talking about trezor and keepkey, I dont know about the others. They warn it is important to write down the 12 or 24 words to the paper sheet and keep it at safe place, because only these words provide way to retrieve your Bitcoin if you lose your hardware wallet.

in some cases, there are also people who do not lose their addresses and passwords, but they lost a number of bitcoin in it. I think it happened because of the very great hackers to get into their accounts. besides if you have a wallet, then save all data held into the word or the like, in case you forget or lose the password, and use 2FA that your wallet can not be used by others

Another guy just lost 0.75BTC

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4v3ych/dont_be_like_metale_of_lost_btc/

Probably others have lost more BTC in the mean time, but I can hardly keep up with the losses, seems like we find 2-3 losers every day.

I think this is giving too much credit. A lot of people are just careless and a simple phishing attack or some social engineering makes them give up their info, and bang, money gone. I'm willing to wager that a lot of people's "lost" money wasn't stolen by traditional hack attacks, but by them in some way willingly giving out their login details, like phishing or social engineering. In this case, as much as it sounds harsh, but it's their fault alone.

It is their fault alone. One needs to verify every url that they are on when submitting personal data, especially financial related. Websites and organizations can only do so much. Eventually common sense needs to kick in.

Never use messaging services on the same computer or device that you keep your wallets on.
That is a no no to begin with.
Always write down you passwords on something physical and not on your computer or mobile in a text file.

I had losted something like 0.10btc because i didnt save the words to recover the wallet and my disk just burned, the result were i got very pissed and i dont use anymore those kind of wallet, i just use online wallets.

That's right because a lot of phishing site in this time and will sue you to increasing your cares about checking the URL and verify if the URL is not a fake or phishing.

If the user/people lost his password i think he have input wrong information of him self that is why if we are creating like our bitcoin wallet account make sure that the personal information is true the number 1 is email and mobile number that is very important because of that we can retrieved our password or username.

I think people need to be more careful especially newbie, there are a lot of scammer in bitcoin, always check and double check the site that you go, is it the original site or the phising site, check the spelling of the address properly, if you got suspicious link dont click it, and always be careful whenever you want to type your password and information
Usually the user lost the password to the scammer and phisher not because of the wallet security is not strong

Yes I agree this is good for rest of us but only in short term and in the long term it’s very much dangerous for all of us. Think if newbies continue to lose their bitcoins then why they would think that this is user friendly. This will make a negative impact of this on the rest of the world so we should come a step forward to build awareness in using bitcoins because that’s what will make a better community a better currency.

Yes almost of the attacks were from phishing links. Links are ranging from simple to complex. Simple phishing are requiring you to login and input data's. While complex phishing are using installed software or links that download spyware to your pc and extracts information like username password, account number and etc. So we just be careful these phishing scheme are also done by hackers, it is one of their tool.

Yes, we must first check the site before actually enter. In a different case I ever download ebook files related to bitcoin without checking first. As a result I get that coin stealer malware, which changes the bitcoin address when we copy. My advice check all urls or file you download before opening it. With antivirus you trust or services from VIRUS TOTAL (https://www.virustotal.com/)

This isssue is still relevant folks, especially after bitfinex hack!

It would be cool if someone could program some sort of bot that catches up with this automatically and makes a list so we can see at what rate coins are being lost. Maybe a bot that scans reddit posts or something.

It is still relevant and so will be as long as the bitcoin exists. While people ignore the suggestion made by others then this will happen always. About bitfinex hack people got a good lesson but still people will leave their coins on the exchanges.

These type of hacks make it even more relevant.. People are confronted with creating their own wallets again and that can result in the reports you have been gathering.

The biggest hurdle here is that the majority of people doesn't want to go through all the extra steps required to secure their coins. The tech savvy guys will do it ofcourse, but John Doe doesn't want to. I think the only way would be to integrate automated back-ups, but those are much less secure by default.

The wallet providers just need to enhance their wallet and make it more userfriendly. If we go mainstream, we will get tons of more dumb people, that need to be warned before doing something stupid.

How? Like a bank? The bank controls your money, and if you lose your password the bank can send you a new one? I don't like it!
Wallet software tells you to keep backups, or "write down the 12 words". You can't blame the wallets if people ignore all the warnings.
The whole idea of Bitcoin is that you are in control of your own money. Being in control includes being able to lose everything if you mess u.

When you create a wallet you receive an email to your email adress. In that mail there is a connect link to your wallet. People are so stupid that they lose even they email adress

Dont be silly, I was referring to a warning window.

But if they dont do that, then bitcoin banks will come, which is bad.


Depends on what wallet you use, most wallets dont need e-mail address.

Depends on what wallet you use, most wallets dont need e-mail address.
[/quote]
If you want to really have a secure wallet adress you register it with a e-mail adress or maybe a phone number . Or you simply write on a piece of paper that details for login and wallet number

But then you lose control over it, becasue if you change your email and phone in the meantime (or somebody hacks it) you can also lose access to it.

If you want to really have a secure wallet adress you register it with a e-mail adress or maybe a phone number . Or you simply write on a piece of paper that details for login and wallet number
[/quote]

all these things are in the category of super risky bitcoin wallets and if you are using email it means you are using a third party to generate the bitcoin wallet which will also introduce a whole lot of risk of trusting a third party.

the only solution is cold storage that is done right, all other methods have some sort of risk, some low and some higher risks.

If you have a lot of BTC then its not very wise to tie it all to 1 e-mail address because its easier to hack the email addres than the wallet. So its very risky.

So at least use multisig with 2-3 and only 1 part should be e-mail based.

So are people still losing access to their wallets? I havent been looking at reddit that much lately, but it looks to me that less people lose their money now.

Did people got more intelligent lately?