How do I protect my money?

[auy]

Hi all
It just so happens that I left the crypto community in 2018 and haven't been back for almost 3 years.
A lot has changed since then and I decided to come back,because I see even greater prospects for cryptocurrencies.
Now I am sure that they are the future.
I have a question,how can I secure my cryptowallet as much as possible?
Because at the moment there is really a lot of money in it.
I use electrum

Thanks 

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[Charles-Tim]

I have a question,how can I secure my cryptowallet as much as possible?

You can start having fun with these topics: Good topics on security and privacy

Best to use cold wallets like wallet on airgapped device, hardware wallet or paper wallet.
Web wallets are the most vulnerable to online attacks while other online wallets (mobile and desktop wallet) are not as safe as cold wallets
Avoid malware
Enable ad blocker like ublock origin on desktop
Do not click on ads
Stop using search engines like Google and other commons ones, use search engine like Duckduckgo
Use broswers like Tor, Duckduckgo or Firefox
Best to enter URL rather than searching. Be careful of fake sites.

To have more idea, enjoy those topics.

[BlackHatCoiner]

May I assume you've installed Electrum on your main computer, that's internet connected, contains the other software you daily use and so on? If that's so, you should move to an air-gap device. Like, get a laptop you don't use, boot an open-source OS after you've verified its authenticity (preferably Tails that comes with Electrum), remove the Wi-Fi card and don't connect to the internet. Generate your wallet.

If you don't want to mess with this or don't have a laptop spared, buy a hardware wallet such as Trezor. There are many alternatives.

[khaled0111]

Welcome back!
You are right, a lot has changed during the last few years but the good practices to secure your wallets are almost the same.
Store most of your coins on cold storage, make backups of your wallets and store them somewhere safe, never share your wallets seeds or private keys with any one or expose them online, use only secure and safe devices...
Electrym is good  but I would recommend using hardware wallets for large amounts of money.
You can also use Electrum as cold storage, check this guide:
Cold Storage

[m2017]

Hi all
It just so happens that I left the crypto community in 2018 and haven't been back for almost 3 years.
A lot has changed since then and I decided to come back,because I see even greater prospects for cryptocurrencies.
Now I am sure that they are the future.
I have a question,how can I secure my cryptowallet as much as possible?
Because at the moment there is really a lot of money in it.
I use electrum

Thanks 

You must feel awakened after a long sleep and the crypto world seems to have changed. I experienced something similar some time ago. In fact, a lot has changed in these few years and the industry continues to evolve. To keep abreast of events, you need to at least periodically follow updates from the crypto world, because missing information can lead to financial losses.

As for your electrum wallet, if you have not used it all this time, then I would now beware of using it. Your PC may be infected with viruses (we don't know for sure, but it's better to be safe) and compromise your crypto wallet. Therefore, I recommend that you first of all take care of the issue of secure access to your electrum, for example, using program virtual box or live usb with tails os electrum is preinstalled).

[BitMaxz]

Since you said you already have Electrum wallet and I'm sure it's not updated yet I suggest you download the Electrum wallet directly on electrum.org and take note 3.4.4 below is vulnerable to any phishing attacks so to avoid it, update it to the latest version.

Also to protect your wallet from any attack always make sure that you have a working Antivirus without them your PC is vulnerable to any attacks.
I suggest you try Kaspersky because this is the Antivirus that I used since 2011 until now I am happy using it.

Or your last choice to get more extra layer of security use your PC as your cold wallet or Airgap wallet and use your phone or other PC as your watch-only wallet just like other suggested above. Or you can use a hardware wallet.

[Lucius]

Because at the moment there is really a lot of money in it.
I use electrum

@BitMaxz has already mentioned that you need to be careful in case you want to upgrade Electrum, because at the end of 2018 a critical vulnerability appeared and a lot of people lost their coins. Except you have to ignore every message you get if you really have an outdated wallet, even if you download wallet files from the original location, you should verify those files before using them.

You can read detailed instructions on the following link, but like the others, I would advise you to seriously consider a safer solution than desktop hot wallet.

[GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum [Guide]

[NeuroticFish]

Ideas, in no particular order:

1. Use cold storage even for moving those coins away. Tails is easiest, but not the only option. Learn how to use cold storage.

2. If your private key/seed was already in a hot wallet (online), you should consider making yourself a new wallet directly offline. Cold storage is one option, hardware wallet is another. Before you move coins to your new wallet make sure you can restore from seed and you get to the same addresses.

3. Make sure you keep your wallet seed words safely offline, in multiple geographically different locations (and it's advised to write them carefully yourself and avoid clipboard, printer, ..)

[auy]

Thank you very much,everyone.What do you think about Ledger and Bitlox?
Electrum installed the latest version from the official site,Windows 10 OS
Only mazilla and wallet are installed on it,no other files in the system
It's good to be back in the hangout again 

[bitbollo]

Hi all
It just so happens that I left the crypto community in 2018 and haven't been back for almost 3 years.
A lot has changed since then and I decided to come back,because I see even greater prospects for cryptocurrencies.
Now I am sure that they are the future.
I have a question,how can I secure my cryptowallet as much as possible?
Because at the moment there is really a lot of money in it.
I use electrum

Thanks 

I highly recommend that you read and study the "glacier protocol" because you will find a whole series of very interesting ideas on how to create a private key and manage your wallet from scratch.
Obviously in this way you can create an ultra-secure cold wallet but you can find many interesting ideas on how to better manage your private keys
https://glacierprotocol.org/

[NeuroticFish]

Electrum installed the latest version from the official site,Windows 10 OS
Only mazilla and wallet are installed on it,no other files in the system

Since you don't have Kleopatra there, I tend to believe you didn't verify Electrum. It's usually a good idea to verify it before install/run.
Another thing: if it's a big amount of coins, I would not keep the wallet (the one with seed/keys) on a computer that goes online. Better overly safe than sorry. Learn about cold storage, really. The cold storage stays always offline, and you need a companion watch only online wallet (on a different system). This page could help.

What do you think about Ledger and Bitlox?

I have Ledger Nano S. It's easy to use, but it's closed source and the company's shop had problems leaking people's addresses. They look now unprofessional to me and I wish I didn't buy this one.
Bitlox I don't know, sorry (and since it advertises Bluetooth I'm also not interested).

Right now I have my eyes on something more flexible: SeedSigner. But it's a DYI wallet and although you can buy all the parts together from certain shops, I think that it's still you who has to assemble it. Another one that sounds good to me is Coldcard.

[dkbit98]

I have a question,how can I secure my cryptowallet as much as possible?
Because at the moment there is really a lot of money in it.
I use electrum

It's much more important that you secure your seed words and keep them in safe place, written on paper or on stainless steel metal.
Coins are not actually stored in any wallet, that is just a software for signing transactions, but you can secure it more with adding strong password, or even better with using multisig setup.
Electrum works very good with most hardware wallets, so it's not a bad idea to make multisig with that combination.

Thank you very much,everyone.What do you think about Ledger and Bitlox?
Electrum installed the latest version from the official site,Windows 10 OS

I never used Bitlox and I was surprised to see that developers are still maintaining it and posting regular firmware updates.
Good thing about this hardware wallet is that it was released as open source, both firmware and apps, and it has cool credit card format, but price it to high in my opinion and it's currently sold out.
Ledger wallets are closed source trash (in my opinion) and I wrote about them many times, model X has bunch of issues with battery, model S has small memory and bad screen, ledger live app is bad, so I don't suggest buying them.
My choice would be proven open source wallets, or just buy old laptop, install fresh linux os and use it only for crypto wallets.

[IIrik11]

Thank you very much,everyone.What do you think about Ledger and Bitlox?
Electrum installed the latest version from the official site,Windows 10 OS
Only mazilla and wallet are installed on it,no other files in the system
It's good to be back in the hangout again 

although, people have mixed opinions on ledger nano.

i still think it is better than keeping your coins in a hot wallet.

the only thing it is missing in my opinion is that it is not air-gapped.

to make transaction u have to connect it to your device which i sometimes feel is a little risky.

even though there's a chip inside which controls the transaction signing part.

i don't know if bitlox is air-gapped or not but if you're looking to purchase a hardware wallet.

i would suggest you go with something that's open source and has air-gapped functionality to sign transactions.

until then you can use electrum but make a cold wallet with on air-gapped system.

you can use linux on a usb to do that.

[BitMaxz]

Thank you very much,everyone.What do you think about Ledger and Bitlox?

Why not check this review by Voskcoin here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288629.0
Or check this big list of hardware wallets with reviews here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5282364.0

Electrum installed the latest version from the official site,Windows 10 OS
Only mazilla and wallet are installed on it,no other files in the system
It's good to be back in the hangout again 

Be careful there is no mazilla it might be malware or are you talking about the Mozilla browser?
Like I said you should have installed Antivirus without them there is a big possibility if you connect your PC to the internet and access some unknown site that could access your PC or inject some viruses your Electrum is not safe. It's always recommended to use Antivirus that supports Crypto and Bitcoin.

[Lucius]

It's always recommended to use Antivirus that supports Crypto and Bitcoin.

Is there an AV at all that in some special way protects users who own cryptocurrencies? As far as I know, there are only AV programs that are free and do more harm than good, and those that have to be paid for, but again it is questionable how good they are in what their task is. Any good AV can prevent a computer infection by recognizing a malicious file (if it has an AV definition in its database), or if it has a good heuristic method to detect potential threats.

I agree that a good AV is something that every Windows user should have, especially if they have a hot crypto wallet on their computer that is always the target of hackers. However, even the best AV, operating system, or hardware wallet cannot protect them from some of the nonsense that people do - when they enter their seed on a website that promises to double their coins...

[Crypto Library]

Hi all
It just so happens that I left the crypto community in 2018 and haven't been back for almost 3 years.
A lot has changed since then and I decided to come back,because I see even greater prospects for cryptocurrencies.
Now I am sure that they are the future.
I have a question,how can I secure my cryptowallet as much as possible?
Because at the moment there is really a lot of money in it.
I use electrum

Thanks 

Since you mentioned earlier that the amount is too big, I will suggest you to use a cold wallet like everyone already said. The advantage of using a cold wallet is that it is not connected to the Internet, so hackers cannot access it, so your wallet and funds are protected. And since you've been involved with cryptocurrency before, it's only natural that you should know about it . And yes, I hear from my friends that the number of scammers has increased now. So, if you want to invest somewhere do good analyzing before joining. After all, welcome back ,dude.

[DaveF]

We need a bit more information.
I posted about this a few years ago, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5205304 and it's still worth discussing today.
How tech savvy are you?
How much is a lot of money. What is a lot to you may not be a lot to others and spending $100 to protect $1000 may not be worth it.
And so on.

The advice posted above is VERY GOOD, but it's also a bit generic. And without more info that is all we can give you.
Followed by this is a public forum the more info you post the more info people may be able to find out about you which may have other security implications.

-Dave

[joniboini]

more information for electrum :

There is some misleading/wrong info there, I think reading the thread on the Electrum sub-board is way better to learn about Electrum compared to this. Also, you might want to read about seed and private keys to avoid confusion in the future.