Bitcoin Vanity Address Generator Review

[fractal5]

I downloaded Silver Thread Software's Bitcoin Vanity Address Generator @ nyhm.net pretty quickly, and installation was not necessary since I already have the correct Java software installed.

Since I couldn't get an address starting with Fractal5 I typed in "fr5" and 8 minutes later I had this public address:
1Fr5c3iaknvQi9w7WuaeiiWxtBoRQ9iNt3

Very nice! I think its actually a good idea to use something than the standard Bitcoin wallet to get addresses because it helps decentralize the Bitcoin protocol. As always there are some security concerns using a small and relatively unknown company, but apparently I trust my intuition enough that just a fleeting glance at their website name and structure was enough. Normally I do a bit more research than that, but don't really have any immediate plans for my wallet and maybe will look more into what I've got before using it for any large transactions.

I imagine a four character address could take a day and a five character address could take a totally impractical amount of time using the software.

[odolvlobo]

That generator is very slow. Try vanitygen: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen. I generated 1Frac5mdjQutPmAsySuKB2SMZ37P9ui7Ri in less than a minute.

Eight characters is a lot, but you could have a "1Fractal5" address in a matter of days, depending your PC's mining ability. You can also pay vanitypool to generate it for you: https://vanitypool.appspot.com.

[tral]

Are vanity addresses as secure as an average randomly generated address?

[odolvlobo]

Are vanity addresses as secure as an average randomly generated address?

In theory they are because private keys are generated at random until one is found who's address fits the criteria. For example, for the address I posted above, vanitygen generated about 50 million private keys before finding one whose address started with "1Frac5" (it got lucky and found one quickly).

However, the security of the address depends on vanitygen's ability to generate private keys that are as random as keys generated by other applications.

[fractal5]

That generator is very slow. Try vanitygen: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen. I generated 1Frac5mdjQutPmAsySuKB2SMZ37P9ui7Ri in less than a minute.

Eight characters is a lot, but you could have a "1Fractal5" address in a matter of days, depending your PC's mining ability. You can also pay vanitypool to generate it for you: https://vanitypool.appspot.com.

I downloaded the generator from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Vanitygen and it was literally about 10,000 times faster in terms of k/s. I'm now going with:
1Frac5cEdUz1sV6EgvKpW2Q8HE7KRsM3Qp

Maybe later on I will get a more complete "1Fractal5" address.