Concerns on Bitcoin and Seed phrase handling

[Wiwo]

Being security conscious is a general responsibility of the asssets holders, and for that, regardless of how we handle our seedphrase  the most important thing is to make sure we handle them more carefully, and nit exposing it by any means.

But from the story, i dont see anything wrong with what the police man did and even as he stumbled on the seedphrase written on a paper  but corps never comprise the information a d he was nkt arrested for holding a wallet, so i dont see any case here.

[uchegod-21]

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.

First thing I said to myself after reading the op was  "I'm never going to tell the officer what this is". I would tell him the piece of paper is from a spelling class I had with whoever comes to my mind. I would tell him just anything, why would he care about some randoms words except he's a suspect too. I don't really blame the cops for doing his job, it's the suspect who was dumb and not smart at the same time.

I have my seedphrase stored safely, but no one would know what it is if they come across it. My major reason for storing it safely is so it doesn't get trashed by someone who thinks it's just random words on paper.

[Z-tight]

Moving around with your seed phrase in plaintext is a recipe for disaster and nobody should really be doing that, if you are very paranoid and you cannot leave your seed phrase at home, then you have to encrypt it, or hide it in such a way that nobody can find it.

I understand that we have to constantly 'worry' about the safety of our backup, but that is one of the responsibilities of being your own bank. There are extra layer of security that we can add to feel more comfortable and make it difficult for intruders, and i strongly recommend extending your seed phrase with a passphrase, but you must store both backups separately.

[Bitcoin Smith]

In the picture, we can clearly see a blue bitcoin logo, along with a QR code.
This is a BIP38 paper wallet, produced by bitaddress.org.
His backup is encrypted, which means he needs to use a password to unlock it.
The other wallet with the seed words is unencrypted and anyone with access to these words can steal the funds.

That is why it is always better to use some kind of encryption to seed words, but this made me a little paranoid to be honest.

What if they need to search my house, even if I am not involved in any illegal activities the government can knock my door anytime and access any personal belongings so what could be the ideal solution that can work in reality. Storing the seed separated in two encrypted memory sticks could be the easiest solution for small amounts, but I wonder what would be like holding thousands of bitcoin and always need to make sure it's security.

[apogio]

Storing the seed separated in two encrypted memory sticks could be the easiest solution for small amounts, but I wonder what would be like holding thousands of bitcoin and always need to make sure it's security.

Splitting a 12-word seed phrase in two parts is not a good idea, because it increases brute-force possibilities by orders of magnitude. In fact, I dislike seed splitting anyways.

Let me suggest some options:

1. multi-sig: find 3 places and store 3 seed phrases alongside with the xpubs of the wallets. Create a 2-of-3 multi-sig vault and even if you lose one of the backups, you're good.

Advantages:
(a) super redundant.
(b) the cosigners can work completely independently without ever bringing them together.
Drawbacks:
(a) not very easy process.
(b) technically, you need to know a thing or two about derivation paths, just to understand how to recover it in some bad case scenarios.
2. bip38: find 4 places and store 2 backups of an encrypted paper wallet and 2 backups of a very strong password. If someone finds one of the backups, they can't do anything. If they find one of the passwords, they won't know where the wallet file is and, more importantly, they may not realise it's the password for a bip38 wallet.

Advantages:
(a) a good passphrase will lead to brute-force infeasibility.
(b) it's very easy to access.
(c) it's very easy for your heirs to understand how it works, because literally everyone knows how to scan a QR code and add a password.
Drawbacks:
(a) you need to bring the wallet and the password together to sign transactions, which makes it better for cold storage and not for using it as a daily wallet.
(b) one address only which is bad for privacy.
(c) legacy address, which means higher fees, epecially if you have multiple UTXOs.
3. bip39 + passphrase: do exactly what I said for option (2), storing the seed phrase and the passphrase in 4 places with 2 backups each.

Advantages:
(a) easy to use because most software wallets support it.
(b) a very strong passphrase leads to brute-force infeasibility.
Drawbacks:
(a) you need to bring the wallet and the password together to sign transactions, which creates a single point of failure if a thief catches you when you have brought all the pieces together.

[hd49728]

Splitting a 12-word seed phrase in two parts is not a good idea, because it increases brute-force possibilities by orders of magnitude. In fact, I dislike seed splitting anyways.

Splitting seed phrase is not a good idea and if you use it in practice of wallet backup, you can have nightmare when you lose splits and can not recover your wallet.

Some recommendations on DOs and DON'Ts in How to backup a seed phrase.
For DON'Ts, it includes Don't split your wallet seed phrase.

If having time, watching this video with good explanations from Andreas Antonopoulos.
Bitcoin Q&A: Why is Seed Splitting a Bad Idea?

[knowngunman]

Key things here:
* Was it within the officers duty to go through what he had on paper?

I don't know how their security forces run their operation over there but it is wrong for a police officer to investigate someone's car property unless it's a severe criminal case and they must obtain order before doing so. It's strictly the duty of vehicle investigation officers to inspect such properties. Moreover, why searching someone's property for running a red light? Why not just fine the driver?

* Suspect went around and about with his seed phrase

This is where he got it wrong from the beginning. Unless you're relocating, it's very wrong to be moving around with your seed phrases. It was officers in uniform today, it might be officers with gun and mask tomorrow. Either way, you risk losing your assets irrespective of circumstances moving with your seed phrase.

* Suspect ran a red light, putting himself in line for an investigation

Staying out of trouble to avoid bigger trouble  There won't be this drama if he obeyed the rules. Lesson learnt the hard way.

* Suspect went out of his way to explain what the phrases was for

But he owes no one any explanation at that point.

[EarnOnVictor]

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.

Is it even right for a cop to search you to that extent, let alone explain what you wrote down to them if you are not under an investigation or a person of interest? What you wrote down is your business, especially when they are normal words. Even if they are programming codes, they are your business, not the police's or the public's. This is one of the excesses of the police.

As for the guy, whether or not it was captured by the camera, so long as it has been seen by someone, he should move his coin ASAP. Some people have a photographic brain.

[apogio]

Splitting seed phrase is not a good idea and if you use it in practice of wallet backup, you can have nightmare when you lose splits and can not recover your wallet.

Some recommendations on DOs and DON'Ts in How to backup a seed phrase.
For DON'Ts, it includes Don't split your wallet seed phrase.

If having time, watching this video with good explanations from Andreas Antonopoulos.
Bitcoin Q&A: Why is Seed Splitting a Bad Idea?

Yeah I 've watched the video and have read Lopp's article. In fact, my recommendations in the post above, can all be found in Lopp's article. I am not inventing the wheel obviously. There are some admittedly superior backup schemes that should be used universally because of their security and ease of usage.

[Bitcoin Smith]

Storing the seed separated in two encrypted memory sticks could be the easiest solution for small amounts,

Splitting a 12-word seed phrase in two parts is not a good idea, because it increases brute-force possibilities by orders of magnitude. In fact, I dislike seed splitting anyways.

That's right, splitting seeds and if someone accessed one then the entropy of my seed will reduced into half that means better chance of brute forcing but also brute forcing any seed that is more than 4 missing words is not really possible (correct me if I am wrong).

Let me suggest some options:

1. multi-sig: find 3 places and store 3 seed phrases alongside with the xpubs of the wallets. Create a 2-of-3 multi-sig vault and even if you lose one of the backups, you're good.

Advantages:
(a) super redundant.
(b) the cosigners can work completely independently without ever bringing them together.
Drawbacks:
(a) not very easy process.
(b) technically, you need to know a thing or two about derivation paths, just to understand how to recover it in some bad case scenarios.

From those three you mentioned this one looks more secure.

As I said for an average user, let's assume I hold 0.1BTC and want the best possible way to store my seed backup and sleep peacefully at night, and for that amount finding 3 or even 2 secured location will be out of reach so in that case what you will suggest.

Securing the seed via DIY/secret ways that only I know how to solve it or there is any way that people usually prefer that is convenient and also provides more security than simple ofline storage.

[apogio]

As I said for an average user, let's assume I hold 0.1BTC and want the best possible way to store my seed backup and sleep peacefully at night, and for that amount finding 3 or even 2 secured location will be out of reach so in that case what you will suggest.

Yes, well, 0.1BTC is a lot for most people (that's $10K +). Obviously the security scheme is related with the amount of money you wanna secure. For example, I see no reason buying a hardware wallet that costs $80 to secure $50.

However, the mechanism and the whole procedure shouldn't be any different, regardless of the money you wish to secure.

[Ishicryptic]

Moving around with your seed phrase in plaintext is a recipe for disaster and nobody should really be doing that, if you are very paranoid and you cannot leave your seed phrase at home, then you have to encrypt it, or hide it in such a way that nobody can find it.

I understand that we have to constantly 'worry' about the safety of our backup, but that is one of the responsibilities of being your own bank. There are extra layer of security that we can add to feel more comfortable and make it difficult for intruders, and i strongly recommend extending your seed phrase with a passphrase, but you must store both backups separately.

Being your own bank in Bitcoin self custody is a very huge responsibility, if anything happens to your coins as a result of Lose or theft of your seed phrase you cannot hold the wallet provider or anybody responsible. Hiding your seed phrase in different secured locations is very important but carrying it around everywhere is not advisable. If you must carry your seed phrase around maybe you feel safer doing so then it should be incrypted so that people will not access your original seed phrase and probably steal your coins. Whatever means that we choose to keep our seed phrase let it not be how people can easily access it.

[hd49728]

Being your own bank in Bitcoin self custody is a very huge responsibility

For example, me and my money. It's my money so I am fully responsible to keep it safely and I don't trust any third party entity to keep it safe for me.

Bitcoin is perfect choice for me to have my own bank and I am fully responsible to keep it secure and safe while I don't have to trust and rely on any bank, any third party to do that for me.

if anything happens to your coins as a result of Lose or theft of your seed phrase you cannot hold the wallet provider or anybody responsible.

Anything relates to money loss is painful and no matter you lose it by yourself or by mistake or scam of any third party entity. Pain is like the same, loss is loss, but if you can control your own bitcoin, you reduce dependence on the other parties, you can reduce risk of bitcoin loss.

Hiding your seed phrase in different secured locations is very important but carrying it around everywhere is not advisable.

Hot wallets with your small funds can be carried around but cold wallets or hot wallets that store your big funds should never be carelessly brought around everywhere. With big funds, it is not recommended to store them in hot wallets and if possible let's store them in cold wallets.

[Z-tight]

Being your own bank in Bitcoin self custody is a very huge responsibility, if anything happens to your coins as a result of Lose or theft of your seed phrase you cannot hold the wallet provider or anybody responsible.

That is what it is, and people who are not ready to be their own bank have to simply stick with centralized systems, it is better to have your money in the bank, than to buy BTC when you have no knowledge of security and go on to lose it to scammers or your own error.

If you must carry your seed phrase around maybe you feel safer doing so

Moving around with your seed phrase only gives a false sense of security in my own opinion, but from what i understand, some people are very comfortable doing this.

[freedomgo]

Being security conscious is a general responsibility of the asssets holders, and for that, regardless of how we handle our seedphrase  the most important thing is to make sure we handle them more carefully, and nit exposing it by any means.

But from the story, i dont see anything wrong with what the police man did and even as he stumbled on the seedphrase written on a paper  but corps never comprise the information a d he was nkt arrested for holding a wallet, so i dont see any case here.

No one knows that it’s actually a seed phrase, unless the suspect does not hesitate to share about it even if the cops are just asking just a simple question because it’s their obligation to ask. Although there’s nothing wrong with how the cops have reacted, but the seed phrase has already ruined its privacy, and anonymity of its owner.

Protect your seed phrase in all possible dangers, so if you can leave it to a safety vault or any safe place, then do it rather than bringing it wherever your destination is.

[Wiwo]

Being security conscious is a general responsibility of the asssets holders, and for that, regardless of how we handle our seedphrase  the most important thing is to make sure we handle them more carefully, and nit exposing it by any means.

But from the story, i dont see anything wrong with what the police man did and even as he stumbled on the seedphrase written on a paper  but corps never comprise the information a d he was nkt arrested for holding a wallet, so i dont see any case here.

No one knows that it’s actually a seed phrase, unless the suspect does not hesitate to share about it even if the cops are just asking just a simple question because it’s their obligation to ask. Although there’s nothing wrong with how the cops have reacted, but the seed phrase has already ruined its privacy, and anonymity of its owner.

Protect your seed phrase in all possible dangers, so if you can leave it to a safety vault or any safe place, then do it rather than bringing it wherever your destination is.

Exactly because the cops never just pulled him over for nothing, he actually over speed and for the record, no one actually know your seed phrase unless you disclose it to them but for me is absolutely easy to go around with such vital information without anyone knowing.

Infact i have multiple sources where i keep my key and other security details, bit i am very privacy conscious, and to that extent, is very hard for anyone to actually know anything concerning that information unless my spouse.

[DYING_S0UL]

Lol, who travels with seedphrase with them? And what's even worse is that this guy wrote it down in plain text! Really dumb way to become poor, unless he already did moved everything before. But even with that this was reckless of him to expose or keep sensitive informations such as seed phrase in plain sight. Also this guy had the audacity to explain the police officers what a seed was! Like seriously man? This is the perfect scenario where this plrase can be used, "Digger his own grave"!

[Distinctin]

Being security conscious is a general responsibility of the asssets holders, and for that, regardless of how we handle our seedphrase  the most important thing is to make sure we handle them more carefully, and nit exposing it by any means.

But from the story, i dont see anything wrong with what the police man did and even as he stumbled on the seedphrase written on a paper  but corps never comprise the information a d he was nkt arrested for holding a wallet, so i dont see any case here.

A seed phrase will always be a seed phrase, once it’s being shared or exposed, that no longer serves its purpose. This is an irresponsibility of the hodler, by not safekeeping the seed phrase at its right place. While the cop is only doing its job, by doing some investigation. If he found out about the seed phrase, that’s because he’s investigating, while the hodler chose to be not cautious on his own action and words that come out from his mouth, since he can make some other reason rather than telling it’s a seed phrase for his bitcoin portfolio.

[Patikno]

From this incident we can say that the owner of the seedphrase can be said to be a negligent or careless person, because I am sure he probably didn't expect that this would happen.

This incident made me remember a similar incident that happened to me, namely there was an incident when I was hanging out at a cafe and at that time the cafe guard lost his cellphone, and what happened was that he and several other cafe members asked for permission to search all the bags and belongings of the customers or visitors of the cafe, including myself, and at that time I was carrying the seedphrase in my bag (in a hard disk drive & ssd), and luckily I had suspected that an incident like this might happen, so previously I used the winrar archive encrypted and combined with a series of fairly complex passwords (and I also backed this up safely on my computer, and also in my head), we know that AES-256 bit encryption from Winrar is quite safe and I'm sure it's also used by many other people, so even if someone tries to bruteforce or decrypt it, it will take time, and I can secure my wallet before that happens.

[pawanjain]

Is it just me or the words in the seedpharse from that video are actually very blurred out. I can hardly see any of the words clearly.
I don't think anyone would have been able to make out all of the words from that seedpharse but definitely yes, carrying it out around like that is stupidity.
The owner of that wallet must either be kidding by not having any coins in it or must be really stupid for handling the seephrase like that.