Feedback from a bitcoin user interview - letter “l” mistaken as numeral 1

[Pmalek]

It would be incredibly unlikely when reading from a screen, since most fonts quite clearly differentiation between lowercase l and the number 1. It would be very possible when reading from something hand written, since many people write these the number 1 simply as a vertical line.

I hope OP finally understands based on everything that is mentioned here that writing down Bitcoin addresses brings no benefits, but can create unnecessary problems.

@o_e_l_e_o do you have a big stash of used Bitcoin addresses somewhere?
What about you @nc50lc? Anyone?

@xml Create a poll and ask the community if they write down addresses by hand and what they think of that! You will see that it doesn't make much sense.

[1714702354]

1714702354

[o_e_l_e_o]

@o_e_l_e_o do you have a big stash of used Bitcoin addresses somewhere?

I have many old used addresses, but most of them are stored safely inside old wallet files on offline devices, with a few old paper wallets which I have spent but not destroyed (because you should never destroy a wallet). I've never transcribed an address character by character as OP is suggesting though, either on an electronic device or with paper and pen.

Why do you ask? If you need a long list of used addresses, then you can get one from Loyce here: List of all Bitcoin addresses ever used - NOW BACK online!

[xml]

If it's real, it's either: 'l' and '1' were written in a homogenous way for the majority of users to mistook the characters or it's actually an eye checkup for prescription glasses.

Any source of that 'interview' so we can "evaluate" its magnitude?

Responding to your questions, the source of those interviews with users is me.

It would be incredibly unlikely when reading from a screen, since most fonts quite clearly differentiation between lowercase l and the number 1. It would be very possible when reading from something hand written, since many people write these the number 1 simply as a vertical line.

There are contridctory findings in many comprehensive, widely-known researches. As a matter of fact, it is very likely that letter l is mistaken as numeral 1 when reading both from screen and handwritten text: "To cite another example, those familiar with computer-generated passwords know how easy it is to misidentify a lower case letter “l” in a password (or email address) as the numeral “1,”" ("https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614409/"). \

I encourage sharing own experience by all forum members. 

[Pmalek]

Why do you ask? If you need a long list of used addresses, then you can get one from Loyce here: List of all Bitcoin addresses ever used - NOW BACK online!

No, no, I don't need a list of used addresses. I am just trying to get my message across that there is no need to write down your addresses physically on paper, which is suggested for recovery phrases.

I encourage sharing own experience by all forum members.

This particular sub-board isn't that frequently visited by newbies and lower-ranked members, so you probably won't get the response you wish for. Beginners & Help would be better suited for something like that. I would be interested in seeing the results of a poll with a question if people write down their Bitcoin addresses by hand and if they find it difficult to distinguish certain letters.

[nc50lc]

What about you @nc50lc? Anyone?

A stash of manually written Bitcoin addresses?
If so, no, just two paper wallets plus their WIF private keys; and every character is distinguishable considering its my handwriting.

Any source of that 'interview' so we can "evaluate" its magnitude?

Responding to your questions, the source of those interviews with users is me.

Ah, so it's not documented?
Too bad, it should've given the claim that "it happens in major cases" some integrity depending on the interview's (experiment's) method.

[NotATether]

The thing is though, that unless you live in China where QR codes are ubiquitous, you can't expect everyone to copy the bitcoin address by that form. That leaves only the copy text button, which for various reasons, can be bugged, and non-technical users cannot possibly be expected to know that bc1 addresses have no '1's (except in the text 'bc1'), and base58 addresses do not have 'l'.

This is all the more reason why users like that should be using Lightning Network, because nodes do not use jumbled strings as payment identifiers (but with something different from an IPv4 address, because they can be shared and rotated by NAT - I suggest IPv6 addresses but not everyone has them. OR perhaps a hash of the MAC address should be the solution, as this cannot change).

[pooya87]

~
I encourage sharing own experience by all forum members. 

We face a lot more issues when trying to manually type in the letters specially if it is from handwriting, for example another big problem is letters that have a similar looking lower and upper case like 'p' or 's'.
Another problem would be missing a character, like after entering the 43rd character your eye skips the 44th and enters the 45th character (eg. in a WIF that has 52 total).

But the problem with this argument is that we are not supposed to do any of that. Things like addresses (base58/bech32) are always stored digitally and copied digitally with user only double checking to see if copying hadn't changed the address.
There are other solutions available for things like keys where we store a human readable set of words known as mnemonic instead of writing down a single key using base58 encoding. Similar characters is not a big problem there.

[Cricktor]

I can't remember ever to had to write down a Bitcoin address or private key by hand to paper, simply because I know it's prone to errors and a bad idea. Paper doesn't check the checksum, so any error would be very bad (and detectable later, but then it might be too late). Addresses are to be copy/pasted and should be easy to read for control of untampered copy/paste.

Quite rarely I typed an address or private key which caught my interest when seen in a screenshot online where it is in a form which you can't easily copy/paste (yes, I'm aware of character recognition tools).

As the OP mentioned it: a password generator that doesn't use a font face which unambiguously distinguishes any character is a failure by design and deserves to be purged from storage and use.

And as already pointed out multiple times, I too see no use case to write down an address by hand on a medium which doesn't have any sanity check for the crypto address. It's dangerous, it's usually not necessary, thus don't do it and don't try desperately to find a likely silly use case.

Always check an address you have copy/pasted or you are about to sign a transaction for! You don't have to check all characters, it's usually sufficient to check around 6-7 at the beginning and end of an address (not counting 1..., 3..., bc1q..., bc1p...).

[jerry0]

is it possible for someone to copy/paste you a btc address for you to send to... but when you copy an paste btc address... somehow that causes virus or malware or keylogger?  That seem to be one reason to not want to copy/paste when someone send you a btc address.  But that is not possible right?  Because if it was malware or virus or keylogger, then the btc address they post would be more like a link that you click on?


 

possible or not?  imagine you want to trade btc for someone else bank funds... they copy and paste you the btc address on messenger or text... when you copy and paste it to nano ledger or whatnot, that possible?

[Cricktor]

If someone sends me a Bitcoin address via messenger or by texting it to me, I can copy/paste it always in digital form. I would never need to write it down manually. There's always a digital path, at least with what I can imagine. I would refuse to go any manual handwriting path.

[o_e_l_e_o]

possible or not?

It's really not clear what you are asking here. All the possible interpretations I can think of have already been answered in this thread:

It is possible that malware on your computer change an address that you have copied to your clipboard so you then paste a different address.
It is possible that somebody disguises a malicious URL as a clickable bitcoin payment code, so when you click on it you are redirected to a malicious URL.
It is not possible to hide malicious code inside a bitcoin address, so that by copying the address you becoming infected with malware.