Effect of storing your seed phrase in Gmail account

[Stable090]

Keeping your seed phrase in Gmail account is dangerous because it puts your assets at serious risk. Your Gmail account might be compromised, and no matter how careful you are, keeping it online would be considered unsafe.  To improve the security of your Bitcoin seed phrase, move it to an offline storage.

If you keep your seed phrase online, then you should know that the assets in your wallet doesn’t completely belong to you, because anything can happen to it at any moment. If your seed phrase is on your Gmail, anyone can collect your phone and have access to your Gmail, and they will copy your seed phrase, and they will be able to access your coin, and your Gmail might even be hacked, and hackers will steal your seed phrase.

Some people knows about the risk involved in leaving their seed phrase on their phone, but the keep on doing it because they do think storing their seed phrase on their phone is also safe because nobody has access to their phone, but they don’t know that their gmail can be hacked. Some of them believe they can easily access their seed phrase when it’s stored online, but at the same time, they can easily lose their own coin also.

The best thing is just for us not to leave our private informations online, because it’s not completely safe, anything can happen to it at anytime, all our sensitive informations should be stored offline.

[Hazink]

It's hard for me to believe that someone who has knowledge about a non-custodial wallet would store his seed phrase in Gmail storage. We create a non-custodial wallet to secure our funds, so why should we store the wallet seed in an insecure place? Storing a seed phrase online, including Gmail, doesn't make a difference when using a custodial wallet. Rather, it's riskier than web wallets.

It's hard to believe, but people still do it, like they consider their cloud storage to be safe and can't be accessed by anyone. Some of them can even tell you how secure they believe it is because they added extra security to their online storage; they forget the fact that either they can be hacked themselves or the email database can be cracked and all information, including their seed phrase, will be in the wrong hands. Another reason why some people are this ignorant is because they consider storing in Gmail or any online cloud storage to be flexible and easily accessible since they can access it from anywhere.

[Pi-network314159]

Yeah, keeping your key or seed online can be very risky if your Gmail is hacked. Because that is the fastest  weapon used by scammers to hijack fund from peoples wallet because their privacy has been tamperd with. If you are having lots of important information on your Gmail account, then you are  viable to risk because any slightly opportunity given to the scammers they will use it to swindul all your fund. so in summary, writing down your seed in a document and keeping it in a safe box is far better than keeping it on the Gmail account. Gmail is like open space to do whatever you like when you have the opportunity.

[dzungmobile]

It's hard for me to believe that someone who has knowledge about a non-custodial wallet would store his seed phrase in Gmail storage. We create a non-custodial wallet to secure our funds, so why should we store the wallet seed in an insecure place? Storing a seed phrase online, including Gmail, doesn't make a difference when using a custodial wallet. Rather, it's riskier than web wallets.

It's riskier than using custodial wallets from Centralized exchanges. They don't give us private keys but I believe that Centralized exchanges don't store their private keys including user private keys online.

If you can not secure your Bitcoin wallets, your devices safely, using a centralized exchange is better. Because they are professional, have technical people to secure wallets and funds better than you.

But it is not too difficult for mastering basic technical steps and practice to secure bitcoin by yourself, so CEX is not my recommendation. It's only for people who can not carefully secure bitcoin by themselves.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts

[Ever-young]

If you can not secure your Bitcoin wallets, your devices safely, using a centralized exchange is better. Because they are professional, have technical people to secure wallets and funds better than you.

This is another reason why crypto exchanges especially the ones that have built reputation are having the numbers of customers they have now, not everyone in there are traders some people just don’t trust their self to be able to safe keep their money their self they trust third party more than their self, they will rather store big amount of money in an exchange and store little amount in private wallet which shows among both the one they trust the more.

[maydna]

We don't know what happen to your two friends so we can not say one is right and other is wrong. But keeping your seed phrase in online storing especially in Gmail will not be recommended because we don't know how secure our Gmail account. Besides that, if we link to our mobile phone, that will be too risk because someone can open our mobile phone to take a look what is inside of our mobile phone.

If they want to store their seed phrase, it is better they use offline storage is better for them. They can keep the seed phrase in anything they want such as paper, metal, or else. They can also buy hardware wallet and keep it in a secret place. That will be safe for them. At least, no one will know where they will keep the wallet.

[Renampun]

...

Keeping your seed phrase in Gmail account is dangerous because it puts your assets at serious risk. Your Gmail account might be compromised, and no matter how careful you are, keeping it online would be considered unsafe.  To improve the security of your Bitcoin seed phrase, move it to an offline storage.

storing personal wallet seed phrases in gmail, I thought it was a good move but it turned out to be the most dangerous to steal, gmail is easy to infiltrate especially if you don't have strong defense on the device you are using (laptop or smartphone) then it is not a good decision to store personal wallet seed phrases there, it is better to store it on external hardware that is not connected to the internet, which you yourself can open and connect to.

[Nheer]

I witnessed an argument between two friends that even resulted in the police getting involved. One of them claimed that he had saved his pi seed phrase in his Gmail, and the other had logged into his Gmail account because he always have access to his phone and transferred all his pi coin. But I wondered if he could be his friend who stole his coin, because we all know that Gmail account is vulnerable to spam and scams.
I created this post because of newbies who intend to invest in bitcoin and may consider keeping their BTC seed phrase in their Gmail account.

This is a very educative post and I am sure it is be useful for a lot f newbies who actually believe and intend to store their wallet seed phrases in their Email. There have some post about this in the past but some beginners must have missed them so it I believe they will learn from this post.
Email is even possible to hack and so there is every possibility that the friend went on to log in to the email and took out the seed phrase because gmail is very easy to login when you know the password as there is no any security protocols required to access the email just the password.

It is not advisable to keep your wallet seed phrase in your email as it is also prone to hacks by scammers. The best practice for seed phrase storage is to write on a piece of paper and store offline that way it will be difficult to be accessed by others if stored properly offline.

[Gaza13]

...

Keeping your seed phrase in Gmail account is dangerous because it puts your assets at serious risk. Your Gmail account might be compromised, and no matter how careful you are, keeping it online would be considered unsafe.  To improve the security of your Bitcoin seed phrase, move it to an offline storage.

storing personal wallet seed phrases in gmail, I thought it was a good move but it turned out to be the most dangerous to steal, gmail is easy to infiltrate especially if you don't have strong defense on the device you are using (laptop or smartphone) then it is not a good decision to store personal wallet seed phrases there, it is better to store it on external hardware that is not connected to the internet, which you yourself can open and connect to.

Yes, if someone can't buy what you mentioned that is not connected to the internet like Trezor or others, I don't think it's too much of a problem for them to store it in Gmail or Cloud or other types for a while. If we create a new Gmail without being contaminated by anything and by pairing 2Fa, phone number and entering another email for recovery, can it still be infiltrated?

[Cricktor]

There're multiple reasons why you shouldn't store your mnemonic recovery words (aka seed words) in Gmail. The list below is certainly not exhaustive.

• do not enter your seed words on an online website like mail.google.com!
• you replace the security level of your seed words (~128bit security) with the security level of your Google account password --- let's be honest, many people have rather measly passwords, likely re-used elsewhere; active 2FA is good, but could still be phished from the user; Google knows your 2FA secret, too, well has to know it of course. If there's a malicious actor within Google, they might be able to steal everything secretly
• you have no control what Google bots scan your email content so that Google can deliver better targeted ads to you; mail content isn't secret for Google by design of their mail service
• what-if some Google bots/KI learns to extract seed words from mail content and give them "special processing"?
  What-if Google KI logs strange word sequences it doesn't expect to encounter for human inspection by KI developers? Bummer!
• and finaly... you simply cease sole control over your seed words! NEVER do this.

[michellee]

Keeping your seed phrase in Gmail account or other online place will be bad decision because there still risky from the hacking or others. It is better you keep it by offline and select the place to store your seed phrase. We don't know how secure their site because hacker and others can compromised using the way that we don't know.

If you think hardware wallet is the best solution for you, you can buy it and choose one or two hardware wallet. But if you think storing your assets in software wallet or phone wallet is enough, you can choose that way.

Only you will know how you can secure your seed phrase but you must learn how to choose the way from many resources so you will know what is the comfortable way for you.

[promise444c5]

If you can not secure your Bitcoin wallets, your devices safely, using a centralized exchange is better. Because they are professional, have technical people to secure wallets and funds better than you.

It's suppose to be opposite, if you aim is to hold then you must learn how to keep you wallet safe... it's not that hard , else if you can handle a cold storage then get an hardware wallet, just make sure it's a trusted one, write out your seed phrase on a piece of paper and keep multiple backups.

• do not enter your seed words on an online website like mail.google.com!

True!  Not only Gmail though, I don't see q reason why a website will require one's seed phrase apart from a DEX  that uses any..

[Bushdark]

It's hard for me to believe that someone who has knowledge about a non-custodial wallet would store his seed phrase in Gmail storage. We create a non-custodial wallet to secure our funds, so why should we store the wallet seed in an insecure place? Storing a seed phrase online, including Gmail, doesn't make a difference when using a custodial wallet. Rather, it's riskier than web wallets.

It's hard to believe, but people still do it, like they consider their cloud storage to be safe and can't be accessed by anyone. Some of them can even tell you how secure they believe it is because they added extra security to their online storage; they forget the fact that either they can be hacked themselves or the email database can be cracked and all information, including their seed phrase, will be in the wrong hands. Another reason why some people are this ignorant is because they consider storing in Gmail or any online cloud storage to be flexible and easily accessible since they can access it from anywhere.

You don't need to be surprised that people still store their wallet seed phrases on Google drive because many do not know the future consequences. Many do not know one of the safety rules that a crypto holders need to keep in touch which is why we need to educate people around us not just to buy cryptocurrency but also how to keep their assets safe from intruders.

We have this knowledge because we are in a community that is strict about crypto safety and how to avoid moves that could make use lose our entire assets. Some people do not even have friends or even people around that can give them the safety precautions on how to keep their crypto portfolios safe from potential loses.

[NotATether]

Who on earth thinks it's a good idea to mail themselves their seed phase?

It's unencrypted, stored on Google's servers and the NSA's servers, and you yourself won't even be able to find it after a few months because ts buried under pages of spam.

This is literally the worst backup method by a long shot. And I've seen crazy things like brainwallets and scrambling.

[khaled0111]

if someone can't buy what you mentioned that is not connected to the internet like Trezor or others, I don't think it's too much of a problem for them to store it in Gmail or Cloud or other types for a while. If we create a new Gmail without being contaminated by anything and by pairing 2Fa, phone number and entering another email for recovery, can it still be infiltrated?

I would never recommend doing this.
You should never store your wallet seeds or any sensitive data online (whether it's your email account or cloud servers..), no matter how secure you believe they are.

You don’t have to buy a hardware wallet (which isn’t that expensive, by the way) to keep your wallet offline. Many wallet apps, such as Electrum, can be used for cold storage. Alternatively, you can write your wallet seed on a piece of paper and store it in a safe place.

[nakamura12]

It is always not safe to store a seed phrase online even though you may think it's safe but it isn't. When you say online, it can be hacked so it's not recommended to store anything online even the password. If you haven't know about lastpass news about private key being stored there so even if it's not private key is that it can be hacked or in other case someone close to you will steal your crypto funds. It's better if it's stored offline or written in a piece of paper or carve in a metal.

[Zoomic]

This is what happens to people who think they are wise when, in reality, they are not. I guess they thought saving their seed phrase online was more convenient, easily accessible, and safe. It still baffles me what these people learn about Bitcoin as newbies when they do not know even simple security measures.

As a newbie, in addition to the basic information I learnt about Bitcoin, I also paid attention to all articles and posts talking about Bitcoin security. When I eventually had a wallet, I carefully wrote out my seed phrase in a book and saved that book like my life depended on it. I did that because I acquainted myself with the right knowledge.

Newbies should not be in a hurry to invest; they have a lot of work to do to secure their bitcoins. Ignorance is really not an excuse here.

[CryptSafe]

OP, it is nice you have shared your friends experience but there are lots of threads that have been created on this board that has to do with saving of seed phrase and safety. If you had taken your time to do a good research here, you would have seen them to write or make your contributions there and share your experiences for the community to read and learn from. I am not against you making post but this just looks like a topic repeating itself always by newbies who fail to do their research to see if what they want to post already exists so they could make contributions or share their ideas and experience with the community rather than flooding the platform with repeated topics.

[Issa56]

storing personal wallet seed phrases in gmail, I thought it was a good move but it turned out to be the most dangerous to steal, gmail is easy to infiltrate especially if you don't have strong defense on the device you are using (laptop or smartphone) then it is not a good decision to store personal wallet seed phrases there, it is better to store it on external hardware that is not connected to the internet, which you yourself can open and connect to.

Gmails are used to register on different websites, and you might end up registering on a wrong website, and they will access your gmail, if any sensitive information is found on the website, then they will steal it, if your private key is on your  gmail, then hackers will steal it, and will move everything in the wallet. Also your mobile phone can be given to someone, and they will decide to enter your gmail, if any sensitive information is on your gmail, then the person might steal it. Private informations should be completely stored offline.

[Mia Chloe]

I witnessed an argument between two friends that even resulted in the police getting involved. One of them claimed that he had saved his pi seed phrase in his Gmail, and the other had logged into his Gmail account because he always have access to his phone and transferred all his pi coin. But I wondered if he could be his friend who stole his coin, because we all know that Gmail account is vulnerable to spam and scams.

Seed phrases have no exact way of being stored the goal is to actually keep them away from the internet as much as possible and that is basically because of the numerous vulnerabilities we have there. The problem of seed storage is both online and offline just you are less prone to unsolicited attacks when you store offline.
Still you need to be cautious of how private you make your Hodlings and that's because you are only targeted most times when the people targeting you know what you Hodl.