Concerns on Bitcoin and Seed phrase handling

[Rgram]

Dangers with seed phrase handling

While surfing the tweeter(X) I came across a few seconds clip from a cops body camera that accidentally recorded the seed phrase of a suspect in the state of Nevada. This suspect ran a red light and as a result, he was parked for investigation and eventually, the cop went through his private things and stumbled on his seed phrase written in a scrambled piece of paper and the suspect went ahead to explaining what it was.


Link to tweet

This goes to highlight the risk associated with having to handle your seed phrase in public or having it on you at all times.
Key things here:
* Was it within the officers duty to go through what he had on paper?
* Suspect went around and about with his seed phrase
* Suspect ran a red light, putting himself in line for an investigation
* Suspect went out of his way to explain what the phrases was for

It’s one thing to properly store your Bitcoins in none custodian wallets and it’s another thing to safely store away your keys. Someone suggested in the comments that the best means to safe guarding a seed phrase is by memorizing it. While that might be some safe means, you are at risk of a memory loss or forgetfulness and all you need is just to forget the placement of one word.

What are some of the safe means to seed phrase handling:
1. Never carry your seed phrase around like a carry-on, it’s not your mobile phone or purse
2. Never upload your seed phrases online or take screenshots of it.
3. Never handle your seed phrase or access your wallets in public.

Safe practices to seed phrase handling: (I’ll like you guys to add to this some of the means you’ve known to work and use)
A. Writing it down on a metal plate and store away in a vault
B. Having bits of it written down on different pages of books or in several books and safely store it away
C. Never having it on like a carry-on
D. writing it in a will but, your lawyer might have access
E. Storing it in a banks safe deposit box

While D and E might be relatively safe, you must understand that, you are not the sole custody and that means you could loss them as well

Means to add a layer of security to your holdings
* Keep your Bitcoin in none custodian wallet
* You could store your Bitcoin using hardware wallets
* Don’t keep all your holdings in one wallet, you can have an expendable wallet
* Don’t employ the cheapest means to your Bitcoin and Bitcoin wallet’s security

Mind you, there is security in not having to make a thing looking too important as, it doesn’t attract to itself a lot of attention.
What do you guys have to add or criticize about this, the means and possibly what’s the best means that have kept your Bitcoins and See phrases secured over the years.

[Hatchy]

Should I call the owner of the seedphrase careless or stupid? I guess he's both... Why would one risk the security of his funds by taking it around written on a piece of paper? I wonder if he has some coins on that because if he does, before he must had realised this video his coins must have already been moved... One lesson here don't always try to be too safe with your seed... Write it down and store somewhere safe..it shouldn't be around you all the time...

[348Judah]

Dangers with seed phrase handling

While surfing the tweeter(X) I came across a few seconds clip from a cops body camera that accidentally recorded the seed phrase of a suspect in the state of Nevada. This suspect ran a red light and as a result, he was parked for investigation and eventually, the cop went through his private things and stumbled on his seed phrase written in a scrambled piece of paper and the suspect went ahead to explaining what it was.


Link to tweet

For the officer to have search you, then you must also have asked for their search warrant, this will first give them the fear that you know what you're doing, secondly, checking your paper should not mean anything to them if they are not suspecting you as a target for any criminal activities, so if they see your seeds, that does not mean they should take a photograph of it, lastly, i don't also think its safe enough for us to be moving around everywhere we go with our seed phrase, this is not best for us in keeping it secure, had it been we have more than five wallets, is that how we are going to be taking them across everywhere we go, even while swimming or passing through some hash conditions that may have our seeds at risk on damage.

[Amphenomenon]

You need to be cautious around your environment especially how you act on camera's, don't just type your password simply because no one is looking at you where as the camera is clearly recording you. You might not know who would get their hands on that date and what they may use it for.

I have been thinking of this and often cautious on camera's and now seeing this proved that there are likely chances of others falling into hurt or gotten their coins stolen through this.

secondly, checking your paper should not mean anything to them if they are not suspecting you as a target for any criminal activities, so if they see your seeds, that does not mean they should take a photograph of it,

It wasn't the intention of the Police men to record that section is just that they had a body camera recording everything. I think this is done to avoid any case of eith parties framing the other.

The car owner is the one to blamed here. No one is expected to be moving around with their seed phrase on paper around. Imagine he was caught by some theft and searching his car they found something of such they can just move the funds. All these are wrong move store your seed phrase at a safe place and if it seems like the safest means for you to store it or if you are moving or travelling then rather than storing on a piece of paper find a better and secure alternative and avoid stories that touch.

[Su-asa]

Corps does not have the rights to just search someone's property unless they have warrants for their search but I guess they do have warrants that's why they searched the man's vehicle and accidentally saw his seed phrase which was supposed to not be seen by a third party. However I believe the guy already knows that his assets is at risk, so he already knew that his crypto assets are no longer save anymore. So he should remove all of them from that wallet to a more private and secured one. Actually I believe that guy already have a backup seed phrase at home or where else but don't know any other place to keep the other one except his vehicle

[Awaklara]

We do not know if he has Bitcoin in his wallet. But carrying seed notes to access our wallet wherever we go is something absurd. Whether intentionally or not, we can leave the recovery seed in a safer place. This becomes an experience and a lesson for us not to take risks with wallets or recovery seeds. We might also find ourselves in that person's situation. Take care of your assets.

[Rgram]

I have been thinking of this and often cautious on camera's and now seeing this proved that there are likely chances of others falling into hurt or gotten their coins stolen through this.

These could easily be the case as in today, most of the upgrades on mobile devices have always focused on processing speed and the camera magnifying power where anyone could be at several kilometers away and zoom in on your activities. That’s the risk you face when doing some privacy concerned activities in public.

secondly, checking your paper should not mean anything to them if they are not suspecting you as a target for any criminal activities, so if they see your seeds, that does not mean they should take a photograph of it,

It wasn't the intention of the Police men to record that section is just that they had a body camera recording everything. I think this is done to avoid any case of eith parties framing the other.

The car owner is the one to blamed here. No one is expected to be moving around with their seed phrase on paper around. Imagine he was caught by some theft and searching his car they found something of such they can just move the funds.

It clearly wasn’t intentional as regular procedures require they put on a body cam and have it on at all times.From the footage, we could hear the cop inquiring on what it was, if it was some access point to their siren data base or something and the suspect proceeds to clear things up. Uploading this piece of footage on the net is what i can’t say but, it’s great they did, for awareness.
If these were criminals and they stumble on you this way, them Bitcoins are as good as gone.

[aylabadia05]

So, why does the owner of the seed phrase carry it everywhere they go, since the car serves as a vehicle? The owner could also store the paper in another form of identification so that during roadside checks like that, it can be recorded on video. 
That's a foolish and reckless action.

Why is there so much emphasis here on the importance of properly securing the storage location for the seed phrase, private key, or password? Because it directly relates to the contents of the wallet.
In such cases, the immediate action that must be taken is to transfer the assets from that address to another address and ensure the new seed phrase is securely protected.

[Solosanz]

It's not wrong to carry your seed phrase everywhere, but the owner is ignorant because he forget his seed phrase.

Even we're in our worst situation, but pretty sure we aware with our secret thing especially it's related to money. If I got caught, I would go out and carry my seed phrase, then won't show it to the police.

We have a right to not show our private thing, don't be weak and obey everything they asked.

But, it's only work if you live in a country with a good regulation, if you live in country with shitty regulation, avoid this.

[EL MOHA]

Even we're in our worst situation, but pretty sure we aware with our secret thing especially it's related to money. If I got caught, I would go out and carry my seed phrase, then won't show it to the police.

We have a right to not show our private thing, don't be weak and obey everything they asked.

But, it's only work if you live in a country with a good regulation, if you live in country with shitty regulation, avoid this.

Yes every citizen actually has is right to privacy but I think there are some case scenario where you can not oblige to not show them things, there are warrants that actually requires one to having show them everything even and you can refuse but that definitely that will be for a high criminal or big crime suspect and from the picture there was certainly nothing like that. This was looking more like a road side search for either drugs and anything and ignorantly the suspect might have had his seed phrase in a bag or wallet which they searched. It wasn’t intentional from the security operative and was ignorance from the owner.

There are people who are seriously having this bad culture of moving around with there seed phrase. Too much protection of this seed phrase usually gets it exposed or lost. For someone not in a permanent environment they can simply have it back up and their main residential homes or home town rather than moving around with it most especially students that find themselves in situations like this

[Nwada001]

Should I call the owner of the seedphrase careless or stupid? I guess he's both... Why would one risk the security of his funds by taking it around written on a piece of paper? I wonder if he has some coins on that because if he does, before he must had realised this video his coins must have already been moved... One lesson here don't always try to be too safe with your seed... Write it down and store somewhere safe..it shouldn't be around you all the time...

We can't completely blame the guy for that mistake; it could be that he's just trying to relocate, or one thing could lead to the reason why he has to move out with the seed phrase. He accidentally bumped into those officers, who took the opportunity to violate his human rights.

If there is anything they are searching for, they should not have been going right up to a piece of paper when the person is not under investigation whatsoever, and secondly, if the guy in question is wise enough, as soon as he's freed from that place, the first thing to do is to empty the wallet himself and move the holding, if there is any, to another wallet.

[CryptSafe]

This event is an old one, though, but looking at what happened, you would not blame the officers for searching him because they are performing their obligatory duty, which warrants their actions. One thing we should know is that a police officer can not search that way up to the point of searching a sheet of paper with you without getting an intelligence report on you. Maybe he must have been on the watch list, and possibly the officers might have gotten instructions to search him.

As for the man, he made a very big mistake to be moving about with his seed phrase which is very risky to start with. He can not give any excuse to be moving about with such sensitive information as it relates to his assets and funds. However, such information should have been kept in a safe place in his house or anywhere he deems safe for such purpose.

Self-custodial is absolutely the best, no third party should help you store your asset. You can never trust them, as anything could happen in the case of storing it because a third party already has access to it. You just have to keep your seed phrase to yourself and avoid third parties.  

[dkbit98]

He mad some big mistakes there, but similar situation could happen if police searched his house for some reason.
That is why I was saying for a while that seed words backup should be encrypted, easy way to do it is with Satochip Seedkeeper cards.
I would also add passphrase on top of seed words, and make multiple backups, maybe even multisig setup for larger amounts.

[hd49728]

He made very big mistake but there is no information like is it a wallet that stores all of his fund. If it is like this, it is truly nightmare for him.

He and any other people knew about this accident, will need to learn from this and reconsider how to back up their wallets more safely and more privately. This is a good guide on how to do that.

How to back up a wallet seed phrase ? (Jameson Lopp).

Very important rules:
Don't store all fund in one wallet as it is like store all eggs in one basket.
Don't bring that big wallet around everywhere as you can have problems and lose it as well as all your fund.
Don't try to split your wallet seed phrase.

By the way, years ago another accident was reported.
How do you safely keep your recovery phrase written on paper?

[justinlamode]

Should I call the owner of the seedphrase careless or stupid? I guess he's both... Why would one risk the security of his funds by taking it around written on a piece of paper? I wonder if he has some coins on that because if he does, before he must had realised this video his coins must have already been moved... One lesson here don't always try to be too safe with your seed... Write it down and store somewhere safe..it shouldn't be around you all the time...

He might have made the mistake of moving around with his seed phrase but this is something anyone can do. You might write your seed phrase down in a paper and try to transfer it to a different location where you will keep it safe and then run into the police like this case. I'm not saying it was what happened, just siting the possibility of that happening. Nevertheless, I don't think I will carry my seed phrase around so the blame is on the person who was careless to allow police scan his seed phrase.

[Rgram]

That is why I was saying for a while that seed words backup should be encrypted, easy way to do it is with Satochip Seedkeeper cards.

I did a quick check on the Satochip Seedkeeper and it has very close similarity with another solution that was discussed by fillippone about Tangem Wallet both of which, you have to download the application as well as link the seeds by importing them into the cards. They both have the NFC feature and looks like a good option but, no possible means to recovery of the cards and its spares are lost.

This though seems to be a good option should you feel the need to move about with your eeed phrase or seeds rather than have it written down.

Does this really mean you don’t get to use other means such as writing your seed phrases down just in case these cards get missing?
Understandably, they come with spares but, in an event of being lost to flood, what becomes your fate when you don’t write the seeds some place else. It still feels necessary to write them but even then, same event could happen to wherever you wrote them seeds. This means, having a sole location for storing your seeds wouldn’t be ideal isn’t it and same could apply to placement of cards.

[Amphenomenon]

I have been thinking of this and often cautious on camera's and now seeing this proved that there are likely chances of others falling into hurt or gotten their coins stolen through this.

These could easily be the case as in today, most of the upgrades on mobile devices have always focused on processing speed and the camera magnifying power where anyone could be at several kilometers away and zoom in on your activities. That’s the risk you face when doing some privacy concerned activities in public.

People have questioned long ranged camera on smart phones but my main concern are still those CCTV cameras, some are easy to hack and someone can be spying to get something they could use to harm others. Especially login credentials, bank pin and the likes.

secondly, checking your paper should not mean anything to them if they are not suspecting you as a target for any criminal activities, so if they see your seeds, that does not mean they should take a photograph of it,

It wasn't the intention of the Police men to record that section is just that they had a body camera recording everything. I think this is done to avoid any case of eith parties framing the other.

The car owner is the one to blamed here. No one is expected to be moving around with their seed phrase on paper around. Imagine he was caught by some theft and searching his car they found something of such they can just move the funds.

It clearly wasn’t intentional as regular procedures require they put on a body cam and have it on at all times.From the footage, we could hear the cop inquiring on what it was, if it was some access point to their siren data base or something and the suspect proceeds to clear things up. Uploading this piece of footage on the net is what i can’t say but, it’s great they did, for awareness.
If these were criminals and they stumble on you this way, them Bitcoins are as good as gone.

I think indeed it was for the awareness or some information that just got leaked either way, in a situation where another party is well aware of your wallet seedphrase and it wasn't your intention then the best thing is to create another wallet and move your funds away, this method is cost effective and not time consuming, and still saves a lot.

He mad some big mistakes there, but similar situation could happen if police searched his house for some reason.
That is why I was saying for a while that seed words backup should be encrypted, easy way to do it is with Satochip Seedkeeper cards.
I would also add passphrase on top of seed words, and make multiple backups, maybe even multisig setup for larger amounts.

Indeed  a search warrant at home can give them an access to ones house and they may stumble upon this. The encryption of seedphrase is a better option. Whether you are using passphrase, multi sig, this is a good addition.

Also, using encryption doesn't mean one would be careful free of those who can see his/her seed phrase because even the encryption you are using will not last forever someday maybe an higher computational device or another will break it. Although this can after over decades but one can't be care free because can be patient long enough for that day.

[SFR10]

A. Writing it down on a metal plate and store away in a vault

Metal plate backup solutions are great, but by storing them in a vault, you're basically saying it's a valuable item ^{[it shouldn't attract that kind of attention]}!
^{- I prefer to make multiple metal backups and hide them in different locations that they can easily blend in.}

B. Having bits of it written down on different pages of books or in several books and safely store it away

Been there, done that and I've lost half of them

I'd also recommend periodically checking your backups ^{[create another one if you can't find one of them (this usually happens if you're really good at hiding them)]}.

[Marvelockg]

an angle to also look at this from is that even when you are storing your seed phrase, it is not advisable to store it in a manner that anyone that comes across it will obviously know that this is a seed Phrae. writing it the way the man wrote it is obviously carelessness of the highest order because even if such paper mistakenly falls off him and gets into the wrong hand, it will mean a direct access to his asset. it does not matter if the offer was right or wrong by reading the content on the paper, anyone that is in the crypto space ought to know better that his privacy is as important as the asset he is holding.

[Felicity_Tide]

If this video ended up on the internet, which I guess it has since you(OP) found it, then there is a big chance that some random dude that came across the video must have try their luck with what looks very much like a jackpot/free money. I might just have to do my own findings to see how the whole story ended especially for the actual owner of the seed phrase. tbh, that's a very careless way of keeping a backup. It is called a backup, and not a personal tool or means of identification to be carried about. I'm not even sure if the police would be held accountable in a case where the coins eventually get missing.

Self custodians can do better honestly.
Just because we preach self custody, doesn't necessarily mean that we have to go about with every security related tool that keeps our self custody in check.