How to properly store seed phrase during inspection?

[Oshosondy]

I am surprised to see this today on the news:

Police body cam leaks suspect's seed phrase during vehicle inspection

It is about a suspect that police searched his car and body camera revealed the suspect's seed phrase to the whole world.

I am considering if traveling and fall into such situation or during inspection, what could have been done to avoid this? Let us assume the person is travelling, leaving where is leaving to work or stay in another town and his car was thoroughly inspected.

Is there a possible way that can be avoided?

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[livingfree]

Don't make it look like a seed phrase. People these days are aware of what seed phrases are look like.

Although this experience is one of the few and sorry for that guy that has to experience it but, I'm sure that many are learning from his experience.

Maybe have a sequence and jumble the combination but I think that someone who doesn't have a strong memory might forget it. At least make a pattern that you are the only one that knows it.

[Lucius]

It's simple, don't carry seed with you and such things won't happen to you. Although there are some exceptional situations when I can understand that someone has such a backup with them (for example, when moving), everything else is a completely unnecessary risk.

Regarding the actions of the police, I know that it is legal for them to record the entire procedure, but how legal is it for such recordings to be published on social networks? Isn't there some kind of data protection, especially if you are not guilty of anything and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The only thing that comes to mind is adding a passphrase to the seed, and in that case that data should be saved separately so that it cannot be exposed to this kind of situation.

[Maus0728]

Plot twist!

That seed phrase is actually a bait for you to send some amount of crypto that will serve as a transaction fee for a script that automatically removes it's balance LOL

[hd49728]

Is it an article sponsored by Ray Paxful?

When you store your bitcoins in non-custodial wallets, you should back up its seed. Backups (multiple backups) should be stored safely and hidden at secret locations. If you leave your backups at public places or anywhere that can be seen by others, that is not a good backup way.

How do you safely keep your recovery phrase written on paper?
Cops check your car, Mom cleans up your room, what else?

[mk4]

Your seed phrase is for instances where you lose access to your wallet; it's not something you should really be bringing everywhere. Imagine your belongings getting stolen and poof your crypto gets stolen with all your other stuff you brought.

[Ahli38]

Be honest if i imagine being in the same situation. so I'm also a little confused when it comes to finding solutions to the problem of storing seed phrases safely when we are in a situation where we have to carry them with us when traveling like moving or something like that.

the solution I think of if I want to move house. and of course have to carry everything including a spare sheed phrase of my crypto wallet.
maybe when I'm at home then it's safe when I write it on a piece of paper and keep it in a drawer with a sturdy lock.

but when we will move and take it with us. then I will do the following steps.

- take a book of novels / stories or similar thick reading books.

- took the paper that had my wallet's seed phrase written on it.

- I will start copying into the novel/thick reading book in the order of 1 word per sheet. It doesn't have to be the front page, we can start from the middle page. for example from page 20. if there are 12 seed phrases, then I will write 1 word on page 20, 1 word on page 22, 1 word on page 24, and so on until the 12 words have been copied at the novel/thick reading book.

- after making sure you copied correctly. then burn the initial paper that contains our wallet's seed phrase.

- and now we just need to keep the novel containing the seed phrase on the way safely. I'm pretty sure no one wants to open the page after page of the novel we brought. and if it opens it will certainly be cursory.

second way

We can save our wallet's seed phrase into a novel by bolding or underlining every word that matches our wallet's seed phrase. I don't recommend marking it with a highlighter because it's too obvious.

that's the only solution i could think of. hopefully help in keeping our crypto wallet safe on the way.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

It is about a suspect that police searched his car and body camera revealed the suspect's seed phrase to the whole world.

We ultimately need to be careful not to expose ourselves to an attack all in the process of trying to secure ourselves from one, having your seed phrase written all over you is pretty danger because the only security to it is when your clothes always remains on you, whereas there are several scenarios that could warrant that same clothe off the body maybe when swimming, or having a summer hangout, there is much to do when it comes to securing the seed phrase because it's our key that needed ultimate privacy and inscription on the body isn't the best method acceptable for me, there are other ways we can use a metallic iron sheet to inscribe the keys and have them locked on a personal vault.

[BitDane]

I am considering if traveling and fall into such situation or during inspection, what could have been done to avoid this?

I think it can't be avoided since it was a possibly surprised inspection and police officer is checking everything.  Unless you left your seed phrase  at home or put it on a safety vault under bank's security service protection or the guy had it saved in a ledger or USB.

Let us assume the person is travelling, leaving where is leaving to work or stay in another town and his car was thoroughly inspected.

Is there a possible way that can be avoided?

The best way to avoid the scenario is don't act suspicious. Don't break laws so that you won't get searched or arrested and your things confiscated and never bring your seed phrases around you.  Put it in a safe place where water and fire can't penetrate.

[NdaMk]

I don't buy the idea of moving seed phrase around where one is going. The weakest place to hide it is a vehicle that which we know is prone to search by inspectors. You can't predict the search even if you are law abiding. A two or more parment saves at home is better. At least a home search comes warrant.

[Frankolala]

We don't need to carry our seed phrase written down on paper to wherever we are going to even when traveling, because it is not safe,imagine the cops figured it out as his seed phrase,likewise any other person that knows about crypto can still know that its a seed phrase and can use it as an access to defraud him. Trying to be safe is exposing and making us venerable to attacks.

Your car is private but you can't stop the cop from searching it,so I will suggest that we should try our possible best to memorize these words that are our seed phrase, some are twelve and some are twenty four,you can just start from one day and start reciting it,six words for a start till it becomes part of you and you move to the next six and so on. This is not applicable to people with various wallets.

[hopenotlate]

Ouch that hurts!

don't know if it is feasable but, also reading some AI writing software threads lately here on this forum, an idea came to my mind : what am wondering about is something like
 - setting AI software to write an essay about a random topic
 - the topic must 12 ( or 24 or whatever the numebr of seed phrase words are) complete sentences long
 - each sentence must contain only one of the seed phrase word
 - the position of the seed word contained in each sentence is determined by a rule : for example first word is in first position of first sentence, second word in second position of second sentence and so on ( of course this rule is quite trivial and mentioned only as an example)


What do you thinks? Is it a total bullshit or what? If something like this might work how can it be strongly improved?

[arwin100]

I am surprised to see this today on the news:

Police body cam leaks suspect's seed phrase during vehicle inspection

It is about a suspect that police searched his car and body camera revealed the suspect's seed phrase to the whole world.

I am considering if traveling and fall into such situation or during inspection, what could have been done to avoid this? Let us assume the person is travelling, leaving where is leaving to work or stay in another town and his car was thoroughly inspected.

Is there a possible way that can be avoided?

Leave your belongings at home especially those important one so that no strangers can accidentally expose what you are hidden on the internet. Maybe try to buy a vault since this could make you more safety away to those people who try to create something nasty on your crypto balances.

This is lesson need to learn for people who keep carrying their passphrase or seed phrase anywhere because what happen to the person on topic might also happen to them.

[jrrsparkles]

First of all, I will not carry seed phrase to everywhere while travelling or anything. And I think secondary wallet filled with small amount is enough for the vacation or travel and the remaining should be in your primary wallet with seedphrase stored safely in your place where you consider it will be safer.

[Leviathan.007]

I am surprised to see this today on the news:

Police body cam leaks suspect's seed phrase during vehicle inspection

It is about a suspect that police searched his car and body camera revealed the suspect's seed phrase to the whole world.

I am considering if traveling and fall into such situation or during inspection, what could have been done to avoid this? Let us assume the person is travelling, leaving where is leaving to work or stay in another town and his car was thoroughly inspected.

Is there a possible way that can be avoided?

I'm just shocked and can't believe how the police body cam can find seeds that easily during a simple car inspection because they could hide the seeds in any place and I think if they could find the seeds like that there is no way to be completely sure about hiding a seed phrase. however I think they could hide the phrase like it's not related to bitcoin it's not a seed, so none would even pay attention to it. For example, they could create a note on paper or a book and create sentences with the words of seed phrases.

[Jatiluhung]

We don't need to carry our seed phrase written down on paper to wherever we are going to even when traveling, because it is not safe,imagine the cops figured it out as his seed phrase,likewise any other person that knows about crypto can still know that its a seed phrase and can use it as an access to defraud him. Trying to be safe is exposing and making us venerable to attacks.

Your car is private but you can't stop the cop from searching it,so I will suggest that we should try our possible best to memorize these words that are our seed phrase, some are twelve and some are twenty four,you can just start from one day and start reciting it,six words for a start till it becomes part of you and you move to the next six and so on. This is not applicable to people with various wallets.

But there are times when we are in a situation that requires us to bring our backup Seed Phrase. like we will move residence from one city to another. because I often do it for work reasons.

but hiding the 12 word seed phrase of our wallet isn't too hard on a journey. we can even write it on a small piece of paper and put it in the shell of the ballpoint pen we use. and put together ballpoint pens with other writing instruments. or many other ways.

after we arrive at our destination then we move the seed phrase back in the book or something like that and store it in a safe place.

[Smartprofit]

I read about a guy who was a tattoo artist. 

He had twelve mistresses and satisfied each of those twelve girls.  Over time, he bought himself 5 bitcoins and the question arose before him - how to store the seed phrase? 

He had an idea.  On the butt of each of his mistresses, he tattooed one of the words of the seed phrase.  He believed that this was a very reliable way to store seeds, but this turned out not to be the case.  All of his 12 mistresses once met, began to communicate with each other and conspired to rob him.  They have long guessed that the English word tattooed on their buttocks is the key to great wealth. 

The most difficult thing for them was to solve the sequence of these 12 words, but in the end they solved this riddle. 

They eventually withdrew his bitcoins to their bitcoin addresses and stopped communicating with the guy. 

As a result, this guy was very disappointed in this way of storing seed phrases.

[Artemis3]

You need to be creative, and whatever you end with, don't reveal it with anyone.

Think hide in plain sight, like a book with marks. Or just don't have it with you but somewhere online encrypted with a very good password only you know, stenographed in some image file, etc..

Hiding a few words is far easier than hiding a stash of cash or ingots. There is no need to carry with you but the minimal for the travel. You can also have multiple wallets just keep large amounts in cold ones.

[inthelongrun]

People should not straight-forward just write their seed phrases on a piece of paper or something. That's just too easy to figure out in case of unexpected incidents. Bitcoin is becoming more popular each day and more people have hints about what is a seed phrase already. What happened in the news is unlikely to repeat but there are too many possible scenarios in that other people might be able to see those seed phrases. Better to make it something of a puzzle so that nobody will think they are seed phrases.

[PX-Z]

I'm just shocked and believe how the police body cam can find seeds that easily during a simple car inspection because they could hide the seeds in any place and I think if they could find the seeds like that there is no way to be completely sure about hiding a seed phrase.

A car is just so small that you can eventually see anything that was keep inside especially if an "inspection" is done because most cars have common place where to keep belongings either in compartments, under the seat, etc.

About the how's on making the seed secured especially those written in papers, i guess it differs from person to person and experiences.
With my paper backup i don't write numbers or even put "Ledger" or anything related to crypto in that backup just to be safe to anyone else.