Bitcoin Forum

fellow members,

As we all know keeping mnemonic phrase in a secure place is the first step of bitcoin journey. But there are few thing that comes in my mind:

->Writing and keeping it with you/your place: What if someone got the access in your absence of theft or any disaster?
-> Obviously keep it online in email of any other way is risking your funds.

What can be the best possible way, My favorite method is to using a metal keycard where I marked the phrase buy again it can be stolen :(

What your way?
 
 
 

This thread was created not long after the earthquake in Morocco: Keeping or recovering seed phrases during or after a natural disaster. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5466612.0)

Read people's replies on the thread.

The best possible way against natural disasters is to backup your seed phrase in far locations from one another.

If you are living in an unsafe place, use a passphrase. If you lose your passphrase backups, you will lose your coins, just as if you lose your seed phrase backups. Do not backup passphrase together with your seed phrase.

Usually when a thief invades your home they are going to steal a lot of far more valuable objects than going through a bunch of papers to steal your seed phrase which they may not even know what it is! To put simply your TV is more valuable in their eyes compared to a piece of paper so it is their target.

But of course you can always add encryption (a simple AES256 encrypt would work) or the lazy way is to add an extension word (aka the password) that you either memorize or keep elsewhere. This would make it harder to steal coins by only having the seed phrase.

One way to minimize physical theft is to try to keep your financials as lowkey as possible, most especially, crypto. For instance, don't flaunt on social media or to your IRL peers.

In case of cryptos, burglars typically don't assume you have it and they usually go for the general stuff like cash, gadgets, etc. That is why I'm convinced a lot of physical attacks to crypto users are targeted, which means perps got a hold of their victims activities/information first.

The answer depends on many variables, such as how much bitcoin you have, how many safe hiding places you have, what percentage of your net worth is bitcoin and so on.

If you have $700 in bitcoin and your only place to store your seeds is in the house you live in, it's not worth bothering with alternatives. If, on the other hand, let's say you have a considerable amount in bitcoin, which is 50% or more of your net worth, and you have several places to hide the seeds (your house, a holiday home, your parents' house, a remote and difficult to access place in the mountains, a bank safe deposit box...) then you need to explore alternatives.

Otherwise follow Charles-Tim's advice and read the thread on Morocco.

- Your 12-24 word backup phrase written on a piece of paper or etched on a steel sheet
- Have a passphrase that isn't easy to guess
- Store these in 2-3 places

Don't over complicate it.

I'll add one more: What if people you trust are access your wallet and use it all without your permission? ::)

If we talk about possibility, every way has it's own risk and a chance to lose all of your coins. It just depends on the person want to take which risk and advantage. If you keep thinking about the worst possibility, you will never think it's already safe.

Let's say I have wrote 50 backup phrases with a good material and spread it to 50 countries, but shit happen on those 50 countries and I can't access my wallet anymore, the reality it's impossible something bad will happen on all the countries.

hi there

I can feel the thing you are trying to make secure from other people or hackers which makes us uncomfortable. it is an obvious thing buddy that we don't want to lose our digital assets so I would like to suggest some techniques like;

1. Make encryption of your private keys and save it in secure where hacker can't access them in case, he got accessed to it he will need a second key.
2. save your second key in a metal keycard at a safe place in your home.
3. Encrypt the third key and keep secure it in a hard wallet and place this wallet at another location from your home which should also be a safe one.
 
I think these tips can help you to make your mnemonic phrase as secure as possible.

Every backup technique definitely has its just that it is minimal to compare to each one.

The first thing is to never store them on an online device like saving a picture on your phone or system.

The second thing is never make many duplicate of your Phrase because it will just make them redundant and will easily expose the storage location of some.

When it is stored on places like usb make sure the device is regularly changed because of wear out.

If it is a large amount stored then I would advice a the use of multi sig wallet but the creation shouldn’t from a single or master key. It should be single seed for every co-signer

That's why keeping on areas where you're the obviously person that will know it is a must. While keeping it on a metal keycard, that's one of a disaster proof but also you need to make it as if it's not an obvious passphrase that you've written there. A metal card o dog tag is like a good one that you can count on in terms of disasters. But as you have said it's not thief proof. The only solution with that is to make back ups that you'll only understand and only you know where you can keep it safe inside your house.

That's a good question, actually this have been discussed due to the recent events of floods, earth quakes etc. Best practise is to avoid stealing of seed phrase is to encrypt your seed phrase and then keep it anywhere, because a single non technical dude can not decrypt that seed phrase and you will be saved.

From disaster, you have to keep the seed phrase in another place like far from your own phrase. Maybe store the seed phrase in another region, city or where you think the disaster will not make any impact and you can access it easily.
Many users prefer to keep them online because that's the longest way to preserve them and if you have selected a drive or I line cloud storage that have distributed storage devices and have auto saving or cloning options then that better then storing on paper. But many will not agree with me.

Since this has to do with storing your seed phrase physically then I would prefer to write it down and add some code-name in my native language in the beginning and ending of the seed phrase, then keep one of my seed phrase in the house where I stay and the other seed phrase in my village.

But let's say for instance, after keeping the seed phrase there, in those two places, I will still want to have it somewhere so that even if I travel, I should still be able to access my seed phrase. So I think the best way I can do this , is to have it on my Google Drive. But of course it's going to be encrypted and at the same time it will be stored with any of my Bitcoin address or, with the use of some simple alphanumerical characters. I will definitely activate the two step verification on my Google so that I am notified once there's any security breach attempts.

First of all saving them with a those names you just stated will simply make them a bit difficult to understand when decoding them, you can trust your mind during its early stages of using this names but ones it gets long you could end up missing them together and there by making mistake of there order. This is similar to using colors (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5459371.0) to designate them and it is also not advice due to mixing them up

The idea of a google drive is also not available because it is as same as storing them on your Gmail. Once anyone gets access to them they could see it there. The best way is to take away from any online platform

Ironically it's probably putting it on encrypted usb stick in a safe vault of a bank containing your private key or a wallet.dat with a password. I say ironically because bitcoiners were famously against banks. At least some were. Or instead of usb, you can use that metal keycard you talked about, or Ledger nano X or
Ledger Nano X or Trezor.

Carrying them yourself is just dangerous.

Or you can do what Vitalik did with his wallets. He gave half of the privatekey of one of his wallets to his father. I see that as risky.

My way is against crypto ethos and i am storing mine in a trusted exchange. I see way more plausible that i would lost it if i guarded it by myself.

Personally, I saved my seed phrase in a secure place online, as well as somewhere I assume no one can obtain it, so that if you mistakenly lose the other one, you can still open the wallet. We can't control natural disasters like typhoons, which are common in my country.

Because typhoons can cause flooding, I shall keep my phrase on an elevated location. If I am not at home when the flood occurs and our house is damaged, I am not too worried since I have a different place where I keep my wallet, which is online. I wasn't concerned about actual theft because they normally didn't know as long as you didn't tell people you had Bitcoin.

Mine is I write or print my mnemonic phrase on a piece of paper and then I will laminate the piece of paper to make it durable compared to paper only and second is I use my other mobile phone to make a back up. My other phone is I never uee it to connect to the internet and it is only use for offline and playing offline games. As of now, I never experienced something inconvenience like someone stolen my funds or someone have access to my wallet.

I didn't know about this but this seems to be really risky. But that's what is trust for and they're direct related so it's no issue which others can just copy this if the father is technically aware of how to do things in keeping wallets safe.

No need to complicate things, all you have to do is what mk4 has already. There's no need to think of conventional method or way of keeping your mnemonic phrases.

But it's you, whatever works for you and whatever the the results of it, you're the one who's responsible for it.

Password is not a universal solution, because it comes with a risk. Losing it means losing the wallet too, so you are increasing your chance of locking yourself out of your funds. Theft and hacks are not the only danger, accidental loss of keys is probably a more common threat.

I understand your concern friend, at first that's what I thought when I first stored crypto, back then with the pocket money I had I was able to buy even though it wasn't much but it was enough to store at that time. armed with youtube and social media info on the wallet I chose, they also provide education on creating a wallet properly and security tips on keeping the wallet in some conditions is very helpful even though the main control is the owner, which means responsibility for actions that can damage even the contents of the wallet.

Many forum contributors have come up with the brilliant idea of writing on metal, paintings, walls or any other hard media that they believe will be safe for some time to come.

That's a good anticipation, but after I got to know airdrop my fears faded a little and thought of solutions, for example I always clean the cache, and revoke after accessing the web (of course by first analyzing some of its social media, always separate it from the main wallet to store the main assets, I personally am still loyal to writing on simple paper, can also later replace with new paper. today I still keep paper since 2004 since I was still in school proving that the quality of cheap paper is quite good especially coated with plastic laminating.

You can try the easiest or safest way with your current interests, as well as raw materials and your readiness to start making

noted you can also buy a hardwhare wallet example (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5282364) It's easy enough, and you can double-protect with your consent.

If you can keep a piece of paper that contains your seed phrase or hell even laminate one for yourself, I think that it's the most effective way of safekeeping your mnemonic phrase. As for me, I assess the place where I live in, if it's prone to floods, earthquakes, fire or burglaries, if it ever ticks the boxes on my list then I would do some countermeasures on it. So far, the best thing that I have done to safekeep my phrase is to paste them in a code generator to encrypt them and then I am the only one that has the key to decrypt it, thanks to that program I am able to just store the decryption key even if I am really careless as to where I store my phrase because to others it wouldn't make sense even if they see it.

Back it up in a safe place such as a safe and keep it protected from anything related to internet access. I wrote it in a notebook then laminated it well, made a QR code and made it like a card. Apart from that, the most important thing is to entrust a trusted person like my wife to have access if something untoward happens to me. Meanwhile, what my friend did was save it in a safe deposit box at the bank and appoint a lawyer to keep it in the hands of the heirs, but it requires tax payments every year. Everyone has their own way which they think is safe, currently I personally think my way is quite safe but it doesn't apply to other people. Checking to make sure assets are still safe, I open the safe and check it every 6 months.

About this, I am trying to avoid storing any of my mnemonic phrases online, all are only offline.
Another thing is store it also in multiple places, and the one down side of this is the risk will be higher if you store it on multiple places but at the same time you have more back up, just make it safe to be able not be access by other people.

I think two places for two backups are enough as more places mean more risk. I agree with you that wallet seed backups should not be stored online. We can not trust third parties as well as there are more risks online than offline.

I have more than one wallet because store all money in one wallet is not good and my main capital is stored in a multisig wallet, not single signature wallet.

The dos and don'ts of bitcoin key management (https://blog.keys.casa/the-dos-and-donts-of-bitcoin-key-management/)

Keeping seed phrase by hand writing is cool but in a sheet of paper it is risky because a sheet of paper us small that can get missing,  in a note book will be more preferable for a  wallet seed phrase to be stored. It is very common that people record vital details on a sheet and forget where it was placed because of how tiny it is but with a note book is very easy to get access to it even if the exact location. Written storage is one of the best methods of storing the seedphrase .

Many have stored their wallet seed phrase in the best way and safely. The way I put my wallet seed phrase is safe for me but may not be safe for many people. I wrote down the seed phrase of my wallet in the notebook. I have it set to my Google Drive for extra security.  I know that even if my notebook somehow gets corrupted, the wallet seed phrase stored in my Google Drive won't. Because as long as I have Gmail I think I can safely recover my wallet passphrase. This method seems to be the best method to me.

In my own little way, I keep all the important things in my cryptocurrency on a USB flash drive; actually, three USBs, but the contents are all the same. I used to leave it on my desktop computer and on my cellphone, but later realized the disadvantage of this, so I moved everything on my desktop and cellphone to my flash drive.

At the very least, if something unforeseen occurs, such as typhoons, earthquakes, or home fires, I still have a USB that preserves all of the seed phrases, private keys, and so on. It is nonetheless important that we exercise caution in such instances.

One way to do it is by manually writing it down and keeping it safe from fires, earthquakes, or other disasters. Another method might involve using a steel plate and engraving the seed phrase onto it. For those whose families are not familiar with Bitcoin, you can add instructions on how to access Bitcoin using the written seed phrase hidden behind the medium.

As for my main balance wallet's seed phrase, I never store it online. For the wallet I frequently use for spending, I keep it in my phone's notes and sync it with Google. While this is not recommended, the small amount involved is a consideration to make recovery easier in case my smartphone gets lost or for other reasons.

But you should remember that electronic devices are easily damaged and you need to check them more often when storing using USB. It's best to write a copy down in a notebook and keep it where you feel safest. Also, I thought it would be good to share a copy with your wife just in case the unexpected happens to us. Every method has its advantages and disadvantages, we just need to choose the method that best suits us without having to imitate anyone.

Writing your seed phrase down or engraving it in steel and providing backups of it in more than one location is probably the best way to store your seed phrase, but to store it in Google drive, cloud services or anywhere that is online is not recommended, take note that whatever is stored online is prone to hacking and you can lose your seed phrase in this way. If you are afraid of a single point of failure, extend your seed phrase with a passphrase or set up a multisig wallet.

Your mnemonic phrase is usually from 12 words and about,  so for me I think the best place to back it up is in your head, maybe after you must as well written it down somewhere you know it can be safe. Keep it safe away from Intruders, let it be one of your topmost secret
So always learn how to memorize it just like your phone number, and let it stick there in your head.

If you save it on your device, your device can easily get stolen or misplaced, or even if you you've written it down, it can as well get missing, so saving it in your head and memorizing it whenever the need arises is the best way to save your mnemonic phrase and to keep your wallet safe.

Hell no, there's a chance someone can suffer brain injury especially when they get older, if you're really depends to memorizing, you has a chance can't access your wallet when you're old enough.


The best is always write down your seed phrases and place it in 2-3 different locations, if you're married you can teach your kids in order to reduce the chance your family will lose your wealth forever.

There is a diversity of methods in itself that each one is like a zoo, it is if from earthquake in its protection method. (metaphor)

And! generally what works best is the individual, his everyday skills in that aspect, such as answering openly in this post what would be his preferred ways to protect some phrases.

#TBT Topic

Keeping the mnemonic seed phrase safe should be one of the easiest thing to do to help keep your coins safe. They’re several ways that you can use to do that, diversifying and using different methods should be the best way for you to keep it safe. Every method has their own advantages and disadvantages, but just know that all the method can’t be compromised at the same time. When you can’t access one because it’s been compromised (lost or forgotten), the other ones you used another method to save could come as back up for it.


What is this backup passphrase? Is it another pass phrase that can be used to unlock the original mnemonic seed phrase for your wallets? If not, what does it serves as in wallet security?

To secure a mnemonic phrase for cryptocurrency wallets, employ these steps:

Physical Storage: Write it on paper and keep in a secure, fireproof location.

Divide and Store: Split it and store parts separately for added security.

Hinted Mnemonic: Create cryptic hints for the mnemonic, enhancing security.

Password Encryption: Encrypt with a strong password and store digitally in a secure location.

Partial Memorization: Memorize key words, enabling access without revealing the full phrase.

Secure Environment: Use trusted devices and networks to access the mnemonic.

Regular Verification: Periodically check the mnemonic's accessibility and integrity.

Each method has its pros and cons, but memorizing seed phrases is the worst idea I've ever seen. You don't have to think about getting older or getting a head injury, with today's stressful life and busy work. That alone is enough to make our brains explode, let alone the hundreds of other things we have to deal with every day. That's why today there are many tools and applications created to help us remember and make appointments for a long day of work.

Each person has their own method, but I also really like the traditional way, writing them down on paper and then backing up many copies to store in many places and sharing with the closest people is indispensable.

I am someone who likes being alone, I don't have visitors and I live with my spouse only, my room is private to me only, so I don't have a problem writing down my recovery seed into a ledger book and also carving on a stainless steel in locked away in my safe, I've been doing this for a few years now and I don't have any problem about losing funds.

Let's try not to forget that its not about keeping your recovery seed safe only, some people are very good with this but they still lose their assets to scammers, what we interact our wallets with exposes us to more danger than keeping our recovery seed safe.

Most funds are lost due to connecting crypto wallets to unofficial links and websites, some links give access to the hacker, exposing your recovery seed, while some are because of our own greed, we are sent tokens that we don't buy with money, yet we want to claim and sell them.

It's wrong to memorize your recovery words, anything can happen to you and you won't remember the words anymore, it's a lot safer to have a hardware wallet or keep your recovery phrase written in a safe location.

What I did was simply encrypt it in a secure box and save it on a laptop that I no longer use and as a backup I saved it in a secure file on Box.com. I think that this is quite safe, considering that it is encrypted, and I also put some of my assets on the exchange, so that even if I lose access to my wallet I still have backup funds on the exchange.

There’s a popular belief that the human brain can store more information and data than the computer can do, but in this case, I disagree with that. It is better you write it down and save elsewhere or in an hardware wallet rather than trying to memorize it. The seed phrase is very sophisticated and hence, they can’t be easily assimilated into the brain to stay for a long time, not when we have so many things going up in our brains all the time.


While putting some in that exchange, hope you put only the one which you can afford to lose. I’m sure you did that because no person will save more money in exchange than a decentralised wallet where they have complete ownership of the funds. Only a novice that have no knowledge of crypto will do that or the ones that are negligence in events like this.

Keep in mind when you're share your seed phrase to closest people, you're taking a risk they will make a silly mistake to keep/save the seed phrase because their knowledge might be less than you.

You're trusting your seed phrase over third party, I don't think it can be said as safe regardless it's encrypted or having password.

The chance you lose your funds is higher in online e.g. centralized exchange than in offline.

A passphrase is an extra layer of security for your wallet, it is an extra 'word' added to your seed phrase which creates another wallet and keys for you, take note that your passphrase does not have to be a 'word', you can use and add whatever you want, even characters to make it stronger and hard to brute force. So whenever you use your seed phrase without adding that passphrase you get the base wallet, but when you use your seed phrase + passphrase you get your second wallet, this set up is great for plausible deniability.

So with a passphrase set, if an attacker compromises your seed phrase, they will still need the passphrase to access your funds. Take note that if you use a seed phrase + passphrase set up, you will have more backups and you have to keep them in separate locations to avoid the possibility of a single point of failure.

I use hardware wallets to store my keys and sign transactions because it gives me the highest level of security. Another benefit of it is that it allows me to make paper backups of my key phrases in order to achieve resilience and continuity incase something happens to me.
My desktop isn't secure at all just like every other desktop out there. My assumption is that both my computer and mobile phone have been compromised. Therefore, any information stored in there vulnerable to being accessed by bad actors.

Maybe their knowledge about bitcoin is worse than ours, but in protecting valuable assets, we are not really better than them. When sharing the secret of the seed phrase, we need to emphasize its importance, I believe they will understand its importance and will protect it with their lives. I even trust my wife more than myself because she is very good at preserving precious things in my family.

Both of his methods place trust in a third party, which is worse than trusting a bank. If I have to trust centralized exchanges or online storage services, I'd rather trust bank. How can our bitcoins be safer in the hands of others? @retreat?

I think that, in general, mnemonic phrase should be stored in a place where you can easily find it if you need it. There are many cases of lost seed phrases due to the fact that people couldn't remember where it was (really, its not a joke, though sounds funny)... So, any way of storing is ok if you always keep in mind where seed phrase is located. Unfortunately, there is no backup if mnemonic phrase is lost...

To me, the safest method of securing your seed phrase is anything that doesn't involve saving it in your email or facebook or any social media account for that matter. Securing your seed phrase involves making sure that there's no risk of you ever sending it accidentally to someone else, or even the prospect of getting hacked and risking giving access to other people.

So do whatever you think is safe. keep it to your person through a paper wallet you keep in your pocket, use a trezor, make a hardware wallet using your hard disk, whatever really works for you as long as the premise is that it's shut off from the internet, and only you could gain access to it.

However, it's not about people preferring a way that's important but using the most secure way to safely keep the mnemonic phrase and the best way will always be offline. Write the phrase down on a piece of paper using a pen (have multiple copies of it), and keep it in a protected location, such as a safe deposit or a lockbox which also protects it from potential possible hazards, theft, etc.

I already know that. I don't fully believe in centralized exchanges and therefore I only put my money on the most reputable exchanges and the value of my assets is also not much.



Well, I know that risk too. However, the exchange that I believe has been operating for a long time and has the largest valuation currently. So if you think it's more risky, I don't think so. And also the seed phrase that I put on Box.com was pre-encrypted in text form, so if someone could crack it I think he would need a quantum computer for that.



My answer is clear enough. So I don't need to explain any more.

Of course, I thought about that and I also had a solution for that. But they don't necessarily need as much knowledge as we do, as long as you let them know the importance of the seed phrase, they will store it like or better than you.

It seems like he's trying to diversify where his seed phrases are stored, but using centralized platforms is unwise. The risks of storing our seed phrase or bitcoins on a centralized platform have been discussed a lot on the forum. I don't think he missed it, he should change things as soon as possible.

If you want to protect yourself from thieves, then you need to further complicate the situation in case such a theft happens, and I would suggest that you do two things.

The first is that the seed is hidden in an unusual place, which means that it will not be in a drawer on a sheet of paper, in a box with Christmas decorations or in a safe (if you have one at all). So turn on your imagination and think outside the box.

If you don't like the first proposal, you can additionally protect seed by setting a passphrase, and you will keep it separate from the seed, of course even better without any indication that it is about something related to cryptocurrencies. Even if thieves steal your seed, without a passphrase they will not be able to generate your coin addresses, and you will be able to safely transfer your coins to a new wallet.

As for natural disasters, there's no point in writing about it again, you got a link to a thread where we discussed it.

The safest method is to write down your seed phrase on a piece of paper or metallic steel plate and keep it in multiple locations, so that if you lost your hardware wallet, phone or laptop to theft or natural disaster, you can still recover your asset.

A guy got robbed at his home after he was bragging about his crypto wealth while drinking in a bar with his friends. They robbers came well prepared with their crypto wallet for him to transfer all his assets. He was lucky they didn't kill him because he didn't have up to the amount he claimed he had. We should learn to be very discreet with our investment to avoid attracting unnecessary attention to ourselves.

It is your keys, and you can store it however you like, but take note that no exchange is too big to fail, not even the ones you call reputable, most of them operate through fractional reserve scam, so even if they don't get hacked, your funds can still be lost if their investment, gambling or trade fails.
It is not recommended to store your seed phrase online or in any cloud service, even if it is encrypted. You may think your encryption is strong enough, but you do not know how sophisticated the attacker could be to compromise your seed phrase.
Yeah, i read this too. Your keys, your coins, and you can store it however you wish.

The simple thing is to save your phrases offline regardless of any method you can. It is never recommended that you do anything out of the ordinary when it comes to securing your phrases - that would obviously be very risky if you had problems with them.

Apart from saving it offline - another best advice is to make several copies of the phrase. It is certainly advisable that you have a copy in case the phrases you have saved somewhere unexpectedly get lost for one reason or another. Then from that - don't save all your bitcoin in one wallet, that means having several different wallets if your amount of bitcoin is quite large.

There are different ways your mnemonic seed phrase can be kept. You can see these ones to know more how to secure your seed phrase even in the time of fire outbreak, earthquake, hurricane, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5404433.0, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0 you can read those threads to see the ways seed phrase is secured.

In the quest to figure out the most suitable option, NEVER store them online. Everything online has a backend and you have no clue what goes on there.

Someone can steal it only if you let them, I mean... Have you considered having up to 2 or even 3 metal keycards? Split your words across them and store them in different places (not in the same house). But then, what if 1 piece gets stolen and you do not have the complete words anymore? The solution is that you can get double of each piece (during creation) hence if one piece were to be stolen or misplaced, you can have its duplicate in another location.

Im not really that confident on trying out to store up those metal plates on different houses or location unless if we do talk about on the same location literally on our house which it could be placed on different corners then it would be ideal but i do still able to see the risks on losing some parts which would really be bringing up some problems later on.Keeping it online is never been recommendable on which same as you said that we cant really be assuring on there's no happening in back end on which it could really be easily be accessed if they wanted to do so and this is something that wont really be a safe place since from the start.

I have already doubts on keeping my coins too on HW like Trezor or Ledger. We've seen some those breaches or leaks or exploits.
Doesnt matter on how reputable they are but still wont really be that enough for us to tell or say that they are 100% safe and secure.

Yes. Physical theft is only encouraged if you are giving them the possible hints. So if you chose to live lowkey and live in private, I guess physical theft will be minimized. However, on part of your cryptos, if you want to protect your seed phrase from being stolen, then never save it online but chose offline. Store it in a secret place that you're the only knows that it exist. And I don't think thieves will run for a single piece of paper than those cash and jewelries that are displayed on your house.

I simply wrote on a piece of paper, I'd keep it like nobody cared it was important as I put it in a place that is far from valuable items just to look like it was useless. I don't think it was the right idea to keep safe from disaster but that seems to be working for theft as they never suspected it.
But for me, no matter what we have to do when our wallet is used online, that is still possible to get hacked and steal our funds. We can't find 100% safe assurance, but at least we do something not easy for these thefts. 

I don't want to make things difficult for myself, I save my seeds in 1 flash disk and 1 special book because I'm the type of person who is forgetful so I think a flash disk in a book is the right place to store my seeds.

So, have you ever thought about your flash drive being damaged because electronic devices are very susceptible to unexpected damage, even if you preserve them very carefully? And the fact that you only have 1 copy saved in the notebook and no other backups, have you also thought about losing it or other problems?

You should have 2 or 3 backups stored in different places, that will give more assurance to your seed phrase. Furthermore, you can also share it with your closest loved ones, don't let those bitcoins disappear with you without a relative to inherit if you encounter unexpected problems.

I don't trust flash drives, hard drives, or any external storage device of that nature because they can get damaged and the files inside will corrupt, including your seed phrase and other valuable documents you saved in there, but saving in a flash will be a bit better than leaving it online in an email or so because anything connected to the internet is very risky and can easily get hacked.

Writing your seed phrase down in a special book is more secure and preferable than using an external flash drive because it will be there and will not corrupt, but if someone has access to it, your coin is gone, because unlike flash drives, you cannot put a password in a book unless you use some encrypted words that only you can interpret, and you can also duplicate the papers because of natural disasters like fire outbreaks, water, and so on.

The first thing is to make sure that you don't attract people by either telling them that you are holding large amount of crypto assets or showing off at the wrong place, people knows what to steal from you when they have vital.informtions about you.

Keep your head down, recovery seed can remain save if written down in a book, apart from natural disasters, many won't come looking because you don't look like someone who have investments in crypto.

I have been doing this for so many years already and it's always there, in my wardrobe, but because of natural disasters I crafted a steel in the shape of an ATM card size, like Credut card and carve the recovery words one by one on the steel using a sharp object and I keep this in a separate location, but both inside my room.

The best thing is to keep your crypto investment a secret to yourself, and don't take them around in your pocket because you can easily lose them this way, such things are safer in your house or your private space, either a room or whatever.

If you write the seed phrase in a special book and are afraid other people can access it, you can use tricks like changing 1 or 2 positions of the words. That way, even if someone steals your phrase, they can't access your wallet. (You just need to change the position of the two words, no need to change too much to confuse yourself).

Also, I think we should have a better storage device than paper because paper is very perishable, as you said. Small sized steel plates as mentioned by Crypt0Gore are a better solution than paper.

Backup your wallet seed as most simplest as possible but make sure you store your backup safely and avoid eyes of other people.

Don't try to trick others and consequently trap yourself with a risky backup method. Changing positions of 1, 2 or 3 words in your wallet seed is a terrible idea. You will need to remember it, need to have a note for these positions but if you lose those position order by a memory loss, note loss, you will need luckiness to recover your wallet seed.

How to back up a seed phrase (https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-back-up-a-seed-phrase/)

When you have like a flood coming into your area then stainless steel means nothing at all. This is exactly why I always supported the idea of hiding it somewhere else, like a far far away place. That's usually not that simple for many people but I do have relatives living in other cities so I just put a piece of paper in their library, and have it in 4 different places today, and they are all old so they wouldn't have remotely any idea what they could do with it neither, so it is not really an issue.

I believe that we are going to end up with something that would be good or not, it is going to end up with being something that would be a little bit tougher on the end and should not be something that could be risky.

Yes, exactly. Duplicating the papers is also advisable so that when you lose one, you will have one as an alternative, and also using some words to trick it in such a way that you will be the only one to interpret it and to avoid stealing your coins, or just as you said, you should interchange the words in a way you can only understand.

Using washers to save your seed phrase is also good, but it is a bit expensive. The full details and explanation were done by Fillippone in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5389446.0). I think it is secure and more easier to handle than paper, but the process is expensive.

Writing down our seed phrase on a piece of paper is actually the primary method I'm sure all newbie must have been thought when they got into Bitcoin newly. So in regards to the question you just ask, I will love to say that the best way to keep our seed phrase safe is by writing it in either ascending order or descending order (i.e in whichever way you may want to) without any incryption such as;
1. My Trust Wallet Seed Phrase
2. Electrum Seed Phrase
3. Ledger Nano X Private key, e.t.c,
Because one big mistake many people make is writing down the name of the wallet that the seed phrase becomes to, and as such making it very easy for anybody to have access to your fund automatically. But if we can write just only the 11 Seed phrase without a clue which wallet it becomes to, it will be very hard for anyone to have access to it very quickly.

There are ready made kits for that where you use a titanium plate instead of washers. Check out Stamp Seed. The whole set costs $120 which is less than a hardware wallet.
It's not really an expensive option for people who own bitcoin. Truth is, if you have a few thousand dollars in bitcoin you don't need any fancy backups. Just remember the password to your wallet and backup the whole file. If someone steals it they still won't be able to access your money and the password remains safe in your head.

"What was it? Changing 3rd and 4th or it was 4th an 5th? "
"Oh no, both are invalid!"
"Maybe it was the 7th and 9th word!? No, empty wallet as well"
"Yeah, now I do remember! I decided to change one word with the preceding one! Or was it changing the second word with a word 2 down in the list? Was it 2 up?

TL,DR: Don't be your worst enemy. KISS principle is the way.

Stay simple and stay safe.

Bitcoin Q&A: Why is Seed Splitting a Bad Idea? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nSibpfHYE)

Splitting seed words or trying to encode it in creative ways will make recovery process more complicated and more risky to fail. Because after one or two additional encoding chains in the process, if you need to recover your wallet from encoded backups, you will have to decrypt it.

Many risks will cause the decrypting process fails that will make the wallet recovery process becomes a nightmare and failure is unavoidable.

Yeah, you can care about it on the long term and if you are careful about it then you are going to end up with something much better. Simple stuff like writing it down to your notebook would be simple but effective for many cases.

People talk about things like "what if there is a big fire, what if there is an earthquake" and so forth, well if you want it so much then put it on an exchange and as long as you memorize the mail and password you use, you can login from anywhere in the world, of course have access to your mail as well. But if you want more security, then ignore the one in a million chance of fire burning down all of your house, and just go write it down to your notebook and be fine.

I keep my keys in an easy and common way - I just write them down in a notebook and keep them together with the other things just to make sure that nobody will find them special.

Making it more complicated will possibly be the reason why we lose it totally. In fact, whatever we did, still we can't assure 100% safety assurance. Remembering that we are doing this online, we are definitely prone to hacking incidents. In fact, many people have lost their funds not only because someone knows their keys but because they voluntarily give them to scammers.

You're right, everything has pros and cons, nothing is absolutely safe. If we keep making thousands of hypotheses and thousands of reasons, we will never find the final solution for ourselves. Maybe one person's method is not suitable for another, but as long as it brings them safety, there is no reason for them to change or imitate others. My method may have risks that others consider inappropriate but for me it's been fine so far. And there is no guarantee that if we follow their method, our seed phrase will remain safe.

When I usually traveling and gone for at least a few to several days, I had to be sure that my wallets and seed phrases are safe at any cost. Although I can choose to remain them written on a piece of paper or notebook, I would rather engrave it in an aluminum metal later on if I have the time to doing so.

Risks like attempted theft, flood, fire, etc., is something that we cannot avoid these days. It’s way out of our control and may come anytime without warning. Better be sure to think outside of the box to keep these phrases safe from these thieves and future calamities along the way.

Like what Captain America said and I quote “Whatever it takes”.

Maybe if you have a risk that the seed phrase written on a special book might be stolen, then you should lead ill-wishers down the wrong path? Create a fake phrase and leave it where thieves can easily see or find it.

I would not store the real seed phrase where it could be easily found by people, outsiders and strangers alike. I mean, there is no need to keep seed phrase on the coffee table or under the computer mouse pad.

Regarding changing the position of some words in a phrase, the main thing is not to forget where and how the phrases will be replaced. Therefore, it is better to leave some keys for yourself so that you can decipher this trick. Memory is not a permanent thing and can distort data. It's foolish to rely on that only when your savings are at stake.

The choice of paper or metal as a method of storing phrases has already been discussed many times. Anyone can carve a seed phrase even on wood or plastic, this is an individual choice and risks.

You're right, maybe I was too nervous thinking that someone might find my seed phrase while I had it stored in what I thought was the safest place. So changing the position of some words is redundant and will cause more trouble for me than for the thief.

I remember there was a thread about memorizing the seed phrase by reading it every day instead of storing it by other methods, and I was a strong opponent of that idea. So when I change the position of those words, of course, I have my own tricks to suggest, I don't completely rely on my memory to do it. If I just rely on my memory, it's no different than memorizing the seed phrase. But I will reconsider my method because you are right, I kept it in a safe place where no one can find it but me.

My way of keeping my mnemonic phrase is I created an excel file on my google sheets, you can find it on your gmail. Aside from that, I also created a copy of it on my computer notepad that was saved on my drive. I also saved on my notebook, all important information and passwords are in there. I always do that incase I lost one of my saved documents. I experienced losing it before, so I learned from it and I feel secured on that way.

If the name of the wallet is just some gibberish then that information is not going to be helpful to anybody without having access to the device. Besides, it's most likely the case that the person has only one wallet on their computer anyway, so anybody searching the wallet folders on the device will only find just the one wallet.

If you know what wallet you use for wallet creation, you don't need to write it down. Because backups are for recovery when your memory can not serve you, then writing down a wallet software name is good practice.

Like me, I don't use any other wallet than Electrum wallet, I don't need to write it down. If you use many wallet softwares, it will be a mandatory part of your backup but if you are careful, you can save it at a different place than wallet seed.

With wallet seed, you can figure out what wallet software use to create it, but if you lose wallet seed, you lose your coin.

Wallet software name is like your wallet password, lose it, you will have another way. It is less important than your wallet seed or private key.

It's also very important not to lose it as well. Most people focus way too much on the security side of things but then they forget about the issues that they have on their hands, which is remembering it, you will probably not remember it or even if you do, you may eventually forget it. While trying to secure it carefully, you may end up locking yourself out along with everyone else and that would result with something that would not be that much a profitable business.

This is why I believe that we need to do a lot better, and that could end up reaching a little later than expected as well. I understand that we could do much worse but we could end up trying to do the best thing we could potentially do by saving it somewhere easy to access by us, but nobody else.

Your opinion is correct that if someone is worried that someone can steal his wallet's phrases and access his assets, it is important to avoid the risk of this theft completely. But to some extent, it can be prevented by changing the positioning of the words in the phrase. But in my opinion, this is also not a tangible measure of the security standard because when a thief steals, he also has access to it. So, according to my opinion, what is tangible and somewhat more secure is the use of washers. Apparently, this is a bit expensive, but it is a better and safer method than changing the positioning of words in a phrase. Because, according to my opinion, changing the position of words in a phrase can lead to problems, like if you forget the positioning of the words, it will be difficult for you to access your wallet, or it will be your luck to meet.

I hope you are joking.
Firstly it is very easy to leave a device with your google account logged in, so it would be quite trivial to find your keys.
Secondly, you are exposed to data leaks from Google.
Storing your key online is exactly the only thing you don't want to do.

Is this for real mate? You're doing it wrongly, to be honest, if you're telling us that we can find it in our gmails that means that you're storing it on a cloud storage/online or your email which is high risk if you're keeping your phrases there. Maybe you don't know it yet that it's one of the riskiest ways of keeping your keys through that means.

The latter is fine if you're keeping it in a notebook and you've written there. And keeping it on a notepad on your computer, you should be aware that when you're attacked by some malware because of how you're browsing and with your computer activities, that could be stolen, deleted, or edited by those.

You might find it weird, but I keep my mnemonic phrase written in the small list in an empty ledger cartoon box. I have thrown that box into one of the boxes of my cupboard next to bed, together with mobile phone, laptop and other gadget boxes. And guess what, for 3-4 years it has been save. Want to know why? Because that cupboard box is a mess and no one wants to organize things there. Because this is a box graveyard that might be needed one day. Since this is considered as my cupboard, no one ever gets there.

If you use that on 12 words seed phrase, then your wallet will be hacked in some minutes. If you do that on 24 words seed phrase, be sure that you really remember that or you'll lose access on your wallet.

People shouldn't use Trust Wallet because it's closed-source and is owned by Binance.

You are a good example of how people shouldn't save not only seed phrases but important information and passwords also. Also, you shouldn't reveal too much about how and where you save things.

The important thing is even for the phrase to be safe and easy accessed when needed. Its importance i won't keep it there if i was the one, and looking at the duration it has stayed there means its safe for you to keep it there onlike me that anything that involves money I won't be even comfortable i will start thinking of several ways just how to keep it safe, once someone has access to it then thats the beginning of the problem. I love the psychological play using the natura of that box to hide it there no one will even think of going through that box except maybe the person is looking for something.

It's really weird but how can I not think of doing that before. I guess it is really effective to keep it in a long period of time. Also it can avoid some people that likes to barge in to your house and check few of your things as he will only see it as a simple box. Might consider doing this also. But I was wondering, do you happen to have another way of keeping safe of your mnemonic phrase, so I can have another option aside from what I do to keep my mnemonic safe right now? Unexpected event may happen and your method of keeping them safe is vulnerable like if there's a fire, a flood, etc.

I have two methods :

I have laminated pieces of paper stored in secret places that are safe against theft and natural disasters. (high and dry and capsuled) AND I encrypted the phrases and split them up and stored them in online storage. (Only people close to me, will be able to decrypt the riddle I encrypted) ....and I left clues to it's location.

We decided to take the responsibility of storing our wealth on our own, so it is our responsibility to keep it safe. (We live in times of war and natural disasters, so we should step up and adapt to the changing times)  ;)

It isnt hard to avoid people getting into my cupboard and searching there for something - there is such a mess inside. Only I can find everything there. Also, no one get inside, because people are to lazy to clean. Instead of cleaning dust, sorting things and etc, everyone prefer relax to work. I can compare my method with grandmas box of spices - no one digs there or searches for something, and only grandma know what is there.

I use a different method that I'm not going to disclose to the public, but I have another idea that might help you. Based on your phrase key (12/24), you can divide them in half and put them together again to make one key, so the middle part comes first, and the first one goes in the middle. That way even if someone gets their hands on the phrase key, they won't be able to access it easily.
Here's another idea. Find a book that has the same thing written on every copy. The book needs to contain every word that comes in the phrase key. One common choice could be a dictionary. Then you can find on which page the words are on and then from top to bottom you can mark the number and the page. After that you can write down the page number and word number in a piece of paper or wood or something metal. That way only you can understand it, and you can decode it in the future.

All the last thing you can do is combine this both and create a much stronger storing system. If one is smart then they might be able to crack it, but that won't be easy. My own method is related to math, but I'm not going to share it. If you think these ideas are good enough, then you can give it a try.