How i keep my private keys safe without hardware wallet

[abel1337]

simply writing your private keys or a back up phrase in a piece of paper and if you want to add some protection to the paper then you can just laminate it and store it in a place where you know, no one can steal it.

This is one way you can do when you want to safely hide your private keys from the hackers. Remember that hackers do have many ways to hack your computer, They might be spying your computer and just waiting to put your private key into your wallet and secretly recording every keystroke that you do on your computer.

It is better to buy a hard wallet if you are afraid to be hacked especially if you are holding a large value of crypto tokens. A hard wallet is somehow cheap now like ledger nano s, It's nice that you have an assurance that your crypto assets would not disappear without your approval.

[liuqi]

Hardwell it is the owner of the option to store your Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. If you fine to keep your friends in your desktop also that would be great.
It is completely based upon your privacy and security systems you are using to to keep your funds safe.
I have all my privately in my computer hard disk only since I started I didn't face any issues.

[NeuroticFish]

1. A complete new harddisk
I bought a new harddisk and install window 7 on it and copy all my private keys in there, i don't bother to leave this harddisk in the pc, after the copy is completed i remove the harddisk and keep it.

While the other methods are OK, I don't agree with this. Imho a new HDD is already a purchase and the price difference to some 60-70$ of a hardware wallet doesn't justify the hassle. (You know that magnetic disks need a refresh every couple of years, right?)
If one goes for cheap methods, paper is the easiest to store and hide. And if one, instead of saving there a private key, will save the seed of a wallet, most people will not even know what strange haiku he has there.

[lighpulsar07]

There are many ways to store your private keys

1. Store it in your removable devices like flash drives, memory cards
2. Store in offline computer or in computer that is protected by antivirus
3. Write the private key on paper and store where you can easily find it but hidden to the other people.  (you can do this if you want to give to your family after death)

There is still a lot of ways to store your private keys you just have to do it in secure and creative way.

[Vinalians]

You have a good setup there where you hide/keep your crypto stuff. I guess you should also had some copies of it somewhere not in your house because what if accidentally your house get burned, for sure it is the end for you. Keeping it on your cousin or relatives that doesn't know about cryptocurrency is also good.
I guess you can also put it on the vault if you have.

[Impaler]

It is always safe to use a hardware wallet but if you don't have one then I will suggest you that  buy more than one flash drive and keep it in safe place. You can use anything which has no direct internet connection.

[d3nz]

My private keys are stored in a cloud storage, zip file and has a password on it, and on my phone safe storages. It is good to save your keys from a different places for your security and protecting your information from hackers.

One thing that i don't have yet is ledger nano since i have a doubt using it and thinking i may get hack anytime. Is there anyone here using it?

[mrdeposit]

I always recommend hardware wallet. But if you don't have the money to buy one. I would suggest you to to use a separate USB device to store all your key. Better if you use more than 2 and keep it in safe place.

USB devices don't always live long, i have 2 dead usb devices i bought at high price, the three can die on you before several years pass, the reason why i include paper wallet is because of this, only fire or water can destroy them but if keep in safe nothing will happen to them, i still have a book from 2012 with me which consist of some login details

USB wallets are bad.

I do not agree with you if the USB wallet is Ledger. Hardware wallets are almost the most reliable ones, and if it was not already there would not be much demand.

Just download a wallet and put the coins on there.

The best wallet is the most reliable, also the Ledger is easy to use. It is not as hard as you think: https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000613793-Set-up-as-new-device

[confreslamp]

The best way is to write every private key down on a piece of paper or in your notebook and to store it in your desk. This is much safer than using external drives, usb sticks or word document on your computer.

[StayFly]

Good practice but you should consider storing your private keys in the cloud for easy access and backup as well. I usually keep my private key on the flash drive and also create a backup on the cloud using my MEGA account. I use MEGA cloud to store all my documents and so on, including my private keys.

[Nany79]

Flash Drive is my best way, it far from the computer and use it only when you need it, this my way.

[kooboat]

Keeping  backups of your private keys is always the best especially when it is done  offline. Personal diaries are always cool that is when you don't have people around   who are likely invade your privacy. One important thing is to be careful with the people you share your personal information with it.

[desticy]

Frankly, I don’t like your methods. Writing private keys to a notebook in which you keep a lot of crypto records is already fraught with problems.
A virus program can download a USB flash drive immediately when it is connected to the system, therefore it is better to use an encryptor similar to a bitlocker, both for a USB flash drive and for your Windows 7.

[prehisto]

You can just use some kind of folder with password and keep your keys there.
Furthermore you can use some kind of encryption program if you are afraid that simple folder with key is not enough.

[SistaFista]

Either on hardisk, flash drive, or any devices wherever you want to put your backup, i recommend that you make a copy of your backup at least 1 of it.
We will never know if something bad happening to our devices like broken, lost, or stolen.
Copy the private key and save it on the disk, and copy on other place as well.

[Meto08]

Firstly I need to let you understand what private key is. Private key is a cryptographic key that can be obtained and utilized by anyone to encrypt messages intended for a particular recipient, such that the encrypted messages can be deciphered only by using a second key that is known only to the recipient (the private key). Private key are part of the essential things needed to be kept safe when it comes to cryptocurrency.

So I will suggest you keep your private key safe by writing them and printing them out or putting them down on your Flash drive and make sure you don't share your flash drive with anyone so as not to be compromise.

[jessyj48]

Keeping  backups of your private keys is always the best especially when it is done  offline. Personal diaries are always cool that is when you don't have people around   who are likely invade your privacy. One important thing is to be careful with the people you share your personal information with it.

Thanks for your advice, its well noted and the fact is i don't have people around me, i leave far away from home and love ones so every thing about my life now is enough privacy, no one knows that i am into crypto and i don't intend to tell any one either

[shaheer001]

Very Good I have also used and applied the same procedure for my coins/wallet private keys and i am sure this is safe way if you can not afford or you don't take interest in the hardware wallet like ledger etc.

[Astvile]

2.My Recording book
I have a long hard shelled book that i use for keeping records of all the airdrops and bounties i promoted because sometimes i used to forget easily so i write down my recovery seeds in this book as well

3. Flash Drive
I have a good 8gig flash drive as well that i use to copy software and files from one pc to another so i format this flash drive and copy my private keys and recovery seeds in it.

This is the best method on what you listed this two will really help a lot if you can't afford to buy a hardware wallet like trezor and many more plus this is the method that I'm also using to keep my passwords and different private keys for my accounts. I can't totally recommend the hard drive method because a hard drive can easily be corrupted (base on my experience).

[X-ray]

Keeping  backups of your private keys is always the best especially when it is done  offline. Personal diaries are always cool that is when you don't have people around   who are likely invade your privacy. One important thing is to be careful with the people you share your personal information with it.

Thanks for your advice, its well noted and the fact is i don't have people around me, i leave far away from home and love ones so every thing about my life now is enough privacy, no one knows that i am into crypto and i don't intend to tell any one either

Personal diaries regardless if you live alone in the forest or something like that it's still prone to people stealing the information away, it's like a book that you keep telling to people not to look but your word will only make people more interested and curious.
It's always better to keep your privkey encrypted rather than saving it on an unprotected book like diaries, maybe you think it will be fine but there will eventually comes a time where people just  secretly look into your diaries. However if you encrypt it it will be fine I guess, still I would prefer saving it on an offline desktop.