Wallet Protection

[Money4jam]

Hello everyone
 As an extreme newbie, I'm curious to know what happens if there's a problem with one's wallet.
I think I get the concept of bitcoins somewhat well, but what happens if there's a problem with the wallet you choose eg. strongcoin? That is, what happens if there's a cyber attack on it or the governments in which it's located decide to shut it down. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Do I still have my bitcoins but need to start using a different wallet, or are all my bitcoins gone?
And what happens if  all the various bitcoin wallets/depositories are attacked-not just shut down eg in the event if a massive solar storm or something, but actually destroyed?

[Endgame]

Bitcoin requires you to take responsibility for your own money, rather than relying on somebody else such as a bank. Your bitcoin wallet is how you store your coins. If somebody else gets access to this wallet, or the wallet is destroyed, you lose your bitcoins. So you need to be very careful to ensure that doesn't happen. The two main options for doing this are storing your bitcoins locally, or using a third party wallet such as strongcoin or blockchain.info. If you're new to bitcoin, I'd recommend going with blockchain.info until such time as you have the skills to store your own bitcoins safely.

[HappyBitCoinUser]

If a big solar storm knocks out our power grids then I don't think BitCoins will be a concern anymore.

[Photonfrog]

You should be able to encrypt your bitcoin data and distribute it across all kinds of storage options. Anyone tried truecrypt in dropbox? ^^

[Minertor]

I encrypt mine with true crypt and keep it in as many locations as possible.

[M2NY]

Think of bitcoin as virtual cash instead of bank deposits. As you keep your cash in a wallet you keep bitcoins on storage media like your PC hard disk or an external hard disk/memory stick.

One advantage of bitcoins: since it is virtual money you can copy it to multiple locations for safety. The bitcoin concept ensures that you can have many copies of the same bitcoin units (technically not 100% exact though) but you can only spend them once. Your wallet could burn in a fire (if you left it at home).. If you store your bitcoins on multiple distributed HDDs redundantly the chance of loosing them is much smaller. You could also print them on paper and keep that in a safe.

For security you need to ensure that nobody including malware gains access to the bitcoins. I.e. my laptop HDD and external HDDs are encrypted using TrueCrypt and my Bitcoin wallet is encrypted itself.

You can also store your bitcoins only as Endgame says. The handling might be easier -- it is much like bringing your cash to a bank though: you have to trust the online wallet or cloud storage provider. Only difference: as far as I know bitcoin online wallets don't create virtual credit money yet and hope that not all depositors come to get their bitcoins back (bank run). Although nobody can prevent bitcoin online wallets/"banks" from doing the same thing..

[Dabs]

Bitcoin is peer-to-peer. To take it down, you'd essentially have to take down a huge chunk of the entire internet. It's distributed, so there are nodes and miners all over the place, in many different countries, in different continents, in different time zones.

Don't worry about the bitcoin network or the block chain. If something wipes out half the network, the other half will keep it secure, and there will be others to take the place of the other half.

As for your own wallet, I personally prefer bitcoin clients that store your wallet or private keys on your own computer, that you can back up. This includes the reference client (Satoshi) and maybe all the other light clients (electrum, multi-bit, bitcoin spinner for android). I don't use hosted wallet services.

Encrypt the wallet. Encrypt the hard drive or computer or OS (TrueCrypt). Use long passwords. Use unguessable and properly generated random passwords. If it looks like your public key, it's good. If it looks like your pet dog's name, it's bad.

Learn about your OS, even if it is Windows, learn how to install it yourself. In the process, you will learn more about security than if you just use whatever it is that your computer comes with. Learn about hard drives, about partitions, about formatting.

[Money4jam]

Thanks all for your replies. Skimming through the other newbie questions, it's clear I'm not alone in my little beginner uncertainties.
I get about wallets now in a non-technical way thanks to your input.