Bitcoin Forum

Hi dev team/ open source contributors:

I have been incredibly frustrated with how troublesome it is to securely use bitcoin.  A big problem is that the program saves a ton of files, including the critical wallet.dat in User\AppData\Roaming\Bitcoin.  This is a problem that should be fixed.  There is no logical reason for this behavior that I can think of, and it makes it very difficult to use bitcoin securely without creating an entire encrypted separate OS install that is used only for bitcoin. 

Instead, put all the files in the bitcoin folder that is created upon running the installer.  That way, User can simply create an encrypted partition with TrueCrypt or the like, mount it, install bitcoin to that folder, and unmount to leave ALL bitcoin data, including wallet.dat, encrypted. 

Also I don't trust Windows to handle anything, so the fact that the installer creates data in the "hidden" AppData folder makes me worry that the OS itself is being used for file handling at a higher level of abstraction than is warranted, which makes me perceive a risk that multiple backup copies of the files there might be created.

With current distro, I install bitcoin to my encrypted, mounted volume, run it, and see that it creates an unencrypted wallet.dat outside of the encrypted install.  WTF, no ty please fix. Then I have to create ANOTHER encrypted volume, copy wallet.dat onto that, then securely delete it using eraser.  And I have to do this EVERY TIME I want to send or receive money.  Unacceptable.

I think you want development and technical discussion.  Project development is for bitcoin-related projects

OK, sorry.

It's not as frustrating, if you follow the guide at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Windows (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Windows)

Just have to run it once have unecrypted wallet once, then copy folder, close it, eraser folder, create special shortcut.  Then your done, just seems like the installer should do this automatically so there is never a wallet.dat in a standard, known unecrypted location.  I can't figure out how to move the thread to technical, either, so that's where I'm at

Since Vista mutable and config files should NOT reside in the program files folder! This was not desired before as well, but now it's nearly enforced.

Please learn a bit more about Windows programming standards before suggesting such stuff.

If you want to have Bitcoin portable in a Truecrypt folder, just run it with the respective commandline switch. It's your own fault that you are too stupid ignorant to read the documentation on the wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet#Windows

You can specify the -datadir= argument when you launch to tell the Bitcoin client which directory to use.

  - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin

Incidentally, there is not a -walletdir=   so the wallet and other databases must be in the same directory.
  http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=2730.0