Bitcoin Forum

Increasingly, new users started to appear on the forum, from day to day I see a lot of messages from beginners how to participate in free distributions (airdrop, bounty), what is needed for this. But unfortunately I did not meet the topic of what is necessary first of all for a beginner, I mean for the safety of your computer.

And so after you learned about the fact that you can earn some free coins on this forum, I advise you to finish reading this post. Some campaigns that are ready to give you a small token for small actions, offer you to download your wallet, the first time I downloaded such a purse to my computer, I began to be tormented by doubts that the company might be a scam and send me a download of a poor-quality software that would steal my passwords or tokens, which I bought for my money. Then I began to look for how to solve this problem, because, I have one computer and no opportunity to download wallets of unknown companies to another computer, I found a good program that creates a virtual disk where you can install these same wallets and are not afraid that they will be ordinary viruses.

https://www.virtualbox.org/ - VirtualBox is software that simulates a real computer. That is, even if the wallet turns out to be a virus, it will not touch your primary wallet, which will store your savings, passwords, documents.

https://youtu.be/63_kPIQUPp8 - installation instructions.

Good advice! Be aware though that virtual machine emulators such as VirtualBox are not catch-all solutions and that occasionally sandbox escape vulnerabilities are discovered. In other words, using VirtualBox does not absolve you from applying other security best practices as well eg. using paper wallets / cold storage / hardware wallets to secure your coins.

That being said, I personally also wouldn't touch alt coin wallets without a virtual machine. Even if you trust the devs, github repositories do get compromised (looking at you, Bitcoin Gold), so be safe out there.

(edit: Also make sure to get the installer directly from virtualbox.org, lest you download a fake version and all is for nil)

Really important to mention this. It is not recommended to install any kind of software on your main system, it is especially dangerous on the crypto scene.

If you don't have the time or skills to setup a virtual machine, then use at least firejail (linux) or sandboxie (windows).

Using VirtualBox does not mean you are entirely safe. All of the wallets depend on the Internet so the virus can respond to your computer and the virtual network as two nodes on the same subnet and therefore spread on your computer.
Also, Prevention is better than cure; this means that you must search before downloading any wallet/thing.
In general, the tip is good, and there is nothing perfect although I prefer to use VPS "needs to trust"

I also recommend newbies that never think you are totally safe always be updated regarding security warnings in the crypto. Use encrypted usb, offline computers, hardware wallets etc.

Excellent advice! Virtual machines can be rather resource intensive, but it's true that they're safer to use especially when you want to run untrusted software (Though I would like to note that doing this is still very much a bad idea unless you absolutely know what you're doing).

I would just like to add, though, that they don't protect you against phishing attacks, so you can't just download forked wallets and be 100% safe, among other things. Some viruses could also still infect your main system from within them, so I would advise against being too adventurous. You should also run a Linux one if you could. Flavors like Xubuntu or Lubuntu are pretty light on resources so they would be helpful for outdated hardware.

The safest method is to install a good antivirus and set it to block all downloads from unknown sources. It is far better than using a virtual machine to stimulate a download.

Unfortunately I do not think that you are right, if you carefully read articles about hidden miners, viruses, then the technologies of hackers do not stand still, there are a lot of viruses that are not tracked by any antivirus or software. I will say more likely that modern viruses are not even tracked in the manager, so you will not even know that there is a hidden miner on your computer or a program that steals your passwords without your knowledge. so the antivirus will not save you. :) :) :)

For the newie, this advice is really good.
I am used to running the newly downloaded software in VMware, confirming that there is no problem and then running it in the real system, which is very safe.

If you're worried about viruses, just install Linux and you'll be (mostly) rid of them forever. I mean, I agree with your point to just not download programs you don't trust, but that can't really be avoided if you're toying with new alts and/or forks. It's definitely safer to avoid them outright, but virtual machines do offer some additional defense in situations where it can't be helped.

This isn't about avoiding viruses, this is about making risky activities less risky.

I agree installing Linux for viruses that will take your information from your computer.

This is the main point to this problem we are discussing, as we all know cryptoworld is risky in some situation.