Wallet security

[miztaziggy]

Can someone that understands how bitcoins work tell me this:

If I keep bitcoins in a multibit wallet and save the .wallet and .key file to my hard disk, are my bitcoins compromised if someone gains access to those 2 files?

So if I now create a new multibit wallet and send those bitcoins to that new address, are those same bitcoins still compromised if someone gains access to the old .wallet and .key files?

[Joerii]

Yeah, don't keep the key and the wallet at the same place. Keep a different encrytion password for each wallet ( if you have more then one type of coin ) and make those passwords very strong.

I suggest Keepass. It's an open source password manager. You just remember one password and then store everything in there. Very safe, very handy.

[miztaziggy]

I guess the main point of the question is this:

If I send bitcoins from one wallet to another (both within multibit) then are the old .key files still a threat?

The reason I ask is that I sent a hard disk back to manufacturer as it had bad sectors. It had .key files on it. Before I sent it I had used KillDisk on it, so it should be safe, but I dont know for sure.

I thought to be safe, I would send coins to a new wallet, hoping this invalidates previous .key backups. Is that right?

[Joerii]

I've never used multibit so I cannot answer that question.

[miztaziggy]

Anyone used multibit that knows?

[DannyHamilton]

Perhaps you'll get more helpful responses if you move this topic from the "Technical Support" forum to the "MultiBit" forum?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=99.0

[The 4ner]

1Password is also a powerful but pricy option for creating strong unique passwords for anything. It also has a browser add-on feature that allows you to log in to any website with the click of a button.