+1 to this, I also couldn't figure it out and stumbled upon this section by accident

True, but if someone is just starting out, they would probably be best served by making a proposal and then leaving it to the more experienced party to decide whether or not to trust them.

Everyone wants to be trustworthy (at least normal people), but on the internet especially, these things take time.

My rule: Everyone lives in Nigeria...until they prove the don't

p.s. No offense meant to honest Nigerians

So after reading this, I'm still trying to understand how secure different methods are, and the time vs. level of security issue.

If you created a truecrypt file that stored either the wallet.dat or the entire bitcoin program, and then only mounted it when in use (of course on a clean OS install with heavy virus protection), would that provide an acceptable level of security? I guess I don't completely understand where exactly the vulnerabilities exist.

Also, is it possible to put the wallet.dat on a flash drive with an encrypted partition, so that the bitcoin program could reside on your main OS, but would have no access under normal operation to your wallet?

Just discovered this very interesting phenomenon and want to learn more.