Electrum Wallet Worries

[platinumsteel2016]

Greetings,

I have an Electrum wallet. I find it extremely easy to use. I was told recently that its a "third-party" wallet. Being a third-party wallet it isn't safe, and that
the owner of the program can take control of the wallet/system at any time.

My question is IF its true is there a way to generate control of the electrum wallet, if no, then what is the probability of this happening???

Please share your thought/experiences/expertise, I truly would appreciate it!!! I hope to hear from you soon!

Respectfully submitted,

[DannyHamilton]

Greetings,

I have an Electrum wallet. I find it extremely easy to use. I was told recently that its a "third-party" wallet.

Unless you write your own wallet software, all wallets are "third-party" wallets.  There is no "bitcoin company" that you can get a wallet from.  All wallets are just groups of people implementing the bitcoin protocol on their own and then getting other people to use the software that they've written.

Being a third-party wallet it isn't safe, and that the owner of the program can take control of the wallet/system at any time.

That is not true.  Electrum is well reviewed open source software.  If the creators of the program had the ability to "control of the wallet/system at any time", then nobody would use that wallet.  Your bitcoins are protected by your private keys, and the wallet does not share those keys with anyone else.

My question is IF its true is there a way to generate control of the electrum wallet,

No.

if no, then what is the probability of this happening???

It will not happen without a LOT of people declaring warnings.  If you wait a few days after any new release before you upgrade, then there should be time for others to identify any malicious changes.

[cr1776]

Greetings,

I have an Electrum wallet. I find it extremely easy to use. I was told recently that its a "third-party" wallet. Being a third-party wallet it isn't safe, and that
the owner of the program can take control of the wallet/system at any time.

My question is IF its true is there a way to generate control of the electrum wallet, if no, then what is the probability of this happening???

Please share your thought/experiences/expertise, I truly would appreciate it!!! I hope to hear from you soon!

Respectfully submitted,

Danny gave a great answer.

I would also add that if you are storing a lot of value (whatever that may mean to you) and are really concerned, you could use it on a computer that you never put online after your initial setup.   Then it would be much more difficult for it to take control of your coins - even assuming that such an unlikely event came to pass.

[noormcs5]

Greetings,

I have an Electrum wallet. I find it extremely easy to use. I was told recently that its a "third-party" wallet. Being a third-party wallet it isn't safe, and that
the owner of the program can take control of the wallet/system at any time.

My question is IF its true is there a way to generate control of the electrum wallet, if no, then what is the probability of this happening???

Please share your thought/experiences/expertise, I truly would appreciate it!!! I hope to hear from you soon!

Respectfully submitted,

Ok, if you notice any of the new coins that come out or even those that have been around awhile have open source code. Most of the wallet software does not. However if the wallet specifically came from a coin developer and it's not Bitcoin there may be some open-source there. They're only half a dozen trusted wallets out there, and you're using one of them. There's no real reason to be worried I've been around a while and I don't see them do anything with it but yes it is very possible for them to access your financial data from the back-end of your wallet. That wallet might even send occasional data directly to their website for tracking purposes things like that. If you're going to freak out over this, think about it in a bigger sense.

[kolloh]

You are much more likely to download fake software than ever have the official Electrum client have malware.

If you are storing a large amount of coins, I strongly recommend that you use a hardware wallet in combination with Electrum. Using a device like the Trezor or Ledger Nano S will safeguard your seed and private keys on the device so that Electrum wouldn't even have access directly.

[mrayazgul]

PayPal , has billions of credit card numbers store for their client, bank account numbers and obviously have a trusted relationship with the ACH.s. they could steal billions and billions of dollars just because people trust them with their information. Microsoft has access to your information. And depending on the services you use like Google, Android and different things you are constantly trusting a piece of software with your personal information. The question is simply do you trust provider of that software.

[Swagtoshi]

When you are using Electrum, you using their servers, but you are still storing your private keys on your own computer. Unless you downloaded a fake copy, only you would have control of your keys.
If Electrum tried to change their software to steal bitcoins, people would start noticing as the code is open source. If Electrum tried to give false information from their servers, you would still retain your bitcoins (even if the display isn't correct), and can simply export the private keys to another client.