Couriers have data of every hardware wallet purchased and delivered successfully

[retreat]

Your concerns are quite reasonable because all that data is sensitive, and we don't know what might happen to us if it falls into the wrong hands, especially with wrench attack cases becoming more common, it only adds to the worry. However, there should be tips that can be used to reduce data sharing with hardware wallet parties. For example, using a P.O. Box and paying via crypto, as explained by Trezor in their article. However, a solution that is no less important is "Anonymous Delivery" from hardware wallet providers, because this includes various things, such as dedicated checkout, locker pickup, etc., which can protect customers.

[coinlary]

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

They can't, think about all that need to be put in place just to get hardware wallet to your doorsteps or a pickup station.

They need a personal  Transport means to fly or  ship to a region( if there are no direct resellers,some don'tevenpreferthatoption) and at the same time they need to setup another personal transport system to move it from a port directly to your house. The workers need to be employed and the have only one job which is , deliver item to a location.

All these  just to sell a $50 pordiuct, don't forget they are not delivering to just a location ? Maybe if people can consider paying so much for shipping and likes( think of $3k~$7k on rough estimates for a $50 hardware wallet device)then they can also  consider it, else it pays them to use a trusted third-party service that's specialised in doing that.

The only option I think they can is if they can find a way to represent their customers info with an ID and a secret key messaged to the buyer, that destroys user data once they receive the package. All that need to be exposed is the ID and of course a delivery location.
On the buyers side, they need to stop getting it delivered directly to their doorstep. They should move their a$$ to pick it up at a pickup location.

[PrivacyG]

You could purchase a Hardware Wallet and have it not delivered to your home.  There are Post Office Boxes you can probably rent with no name on them.  Or.  You could have it delivered to a location where a lot of people enter and leave such as a close hotel or a mall and be there when the courier makes the delivery.  There are ways to avoid this problem.  You only need to be a little bit creative.

[X-ray]

One of good example where you can't always depend on other people to take care of your privacy, sometime you need to do it yourself.

If you are buying for hardware wallet, use cryptocurrency for payment so when payment info got leaked, your payment detail especially credit card detail that could link to your information don't get leaked.

Worried about data breach? use burner contact info, I think almost all VPN company provides one as an add-on. You can even uses an email aliases from anonymous email forwarding services.

If you are concerned about shipping address, rent a P.O. box.

Sometime you gotta do it your own to ensure you are safe from any form of data breach, never trust company to do it for you.

[Findingnemo]

~
If someone like myself decided to run their own airgapped wallet using an abandoned device like old laptop or something how will I use Passphrase on such wallet?

Does Electrum has an option where passphrases can be added?

Yes, you can do that on electrum and different wallet might have different names for it. In electrum you can see the checkbox like extend the seed phrase where you can enter 13th or 25th word that will be your passphrase and in some wallet they say password which will be your passphrase so make sure the description of the option is extending the seed and not just use for encryption.

[m2017]

Lately I've been thinking, is it really safe that couriers are the ones shipping hardware wallet that we purchased from official hardware wallet companies to our homes?

And who is supposed to do this work? Anonymous, disposable delivery workers whose memories are wiped after every delivery?

Since Bitcoin and crypto are the new gold mine if eventually Bitcoin goes up to $1 million dollars per coin this will make bad actors to even want to commit more crimes just to secure people's Bitcoin.

That is precisely how it will be; after all, look at the surge in crimes targeting crypto holders - it has only been rising in recent years.

My worries is couriers or what are they called have your address and they know what you are buying since the receipt sometimes comes with the item glued to the case or package.

A courier sees only your specific delivery (or a few similar packages), whereas the courier service maintains a database containing such information covering a city, a country, or even multiple countries. The scale here is far greater, and the likelihood of this data being stolen, for instance, by the company's own employees is higher.

My point is that the threat posed by the courier service as a whole may be greater than that posed by an individual courier.

Call me crazy but I am just thinking ahead.

I would call it caution. If you are worried about a local courier, you could travel to a neighboring country and have the order delivered there. However, that wouldn't protect you from a leak of the company's user data, should one occur.

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

To do this, they would have had to build a different type of business, and it is unclear whether it would have been profitable (even in conjunction with HW manufacturing). Furthermore, this manufacturers themselves are not immune to hacking or the theft of user and delivery data.

[Popkon6]

Lately I've been thinking, is it really safe that couriers are the ones shipping hardware wallet that we purchased from official hardware wallet companies to our homes?

But in the situation where the courier is brought into service, it is definitely suspicious, because they have your documents mentioned where your permanent address is. But because if you are cheated for any reason, then your documents can definitely be sold to the underworld. So it is necessary to have a permanent solution so that they vanish those documents forever.

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

This will be a permanent solution because they will delete all the documents after delivering the product. Because at present it carries a lot of risk if they have documents then the person holding the bitcoin will definitely be in fear. So this can only be solved through law, the law of the country will mention that the courier service will delete all the data after delivering their product then the risk will be much less.

[Outhue]

The only reasonable way that I can get hit for holding Bitcoin using what OP said is if I become a target in a hit list and this will consist of professionals that will have to travel from one country to mine in order to get me, I don't think it's going to worth it unless they are so certain that I still have some Bitcoin after several years have passed already, it's been like 3 or 4 years now that I got my hardware wallet and it wasn't delivered to my doorstep, I went to the nearest pickup center as it arrived on that same day, so even if Bitcoin turned a million dollars how will they know that you still have some Bitcoin to plan or prepare for such job and get into the country where you at? I'm in Africa and it's going to be harder compare to someone in the US, there is no one building hardware wallets here it's always from another country.

[r_victory]

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success?

I believe it would make the product more expensive, as this additional cost would have to be passed on to the customer. Most companies use third-party logistics companies; maintaining their own fleet or hiring delivery drivers is an extra cost.

People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

It doesn't make sense to me. People can't know I have a hardware wallet, but they can see a watch worth thousands of dollars on my wrist or see me driving a half-million-dollar car? How many high-value items have you received at your home? Think about it, what difference does it make? Or do you live like a beggar but have a hardware wallet?

[Alphakilo]

You could purchase a Hardware Wallet and have it not delivered to your home.  There are Post Office Boxes you can probably rent with no name on them.  Or.  You could have it delivered to a location where a lot of people enter and leave such as a close hotel or a mall and be there when the courier makes the delivery.  There are ways to avoid this problem.  You only need to be a little bit creative.

No matter how creative one can become while trying to maintain privacy when buying and receiving their hardware wallet, the worst case scenario isn't even the fear of the courier knowing your address or the company knowing your personal details. What I fear the most is having to buy a hardware wallet that comes pre installed with a bug or malicious software system that could compromise the safety of the wallet like what happened with coldcard incident.

The bottom line is that no matter how careful one may think they are, some little mistakes could make all the effort futile and that's why it's good to be security conscious, know the company we are buying our hardware wallet from, use a false identity if possible and ensure absolute privacy even during collecting what we paid for no matter where it comes from, just to be safe and ensure strict security measures just in case.

[Agathamay]

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

You're not crazy but your think was very logical and ought to also be considered but the truth is that, I don't think there's much we can do about this because if we begin thinking out the rate of possibilities for crime and the extent of people's thoughts then, it will be very difficult for us to trust people or deal with people but that aside, I feel which ever way, if evil wants to happen, then it is still bound to happen because even the wallet company wouldn't have the manager of their company deliver the wallet to you, neither will the top staff as it would still be done by a carrier or a rider which mean that, whichever way, we get to fall at the mercy of the deliverer, so that's why we always prefer to stay optimistic when taking risk else we can't be able to take risk if we truly want to be critical thinkers.

[Delaforetnoire]

No matter how creative one can become while trying to maintain privacy when buying and receiving their hardware wallet, the worst case scenario isn't even the fear of the courier knowing your address or the company knowing your personal details. What I fear the most is having to buy a hardware wallet that comes pre installed with a bug or malicious software system that could compromise the safety of the wallet like what happened with coldcard incident.

No matter how much creativity is used to work for maintaining privacy, buying a hardware wallet through this courier system is not 100% safe in any way.

No matter how securely the company from which the hardware wallet is being bought sends the wallet by courier, it can hardly be considered safe.

If we think about 100% security, buying a hardware wallet through courier cannot be said to be safe.

[Dave1]

Lately I've been thinking, is it really safe that couriers are the ones shipping hardware wallet that we purchased from official hardware wallet companies to our homes?

Since Bitcoin and crypto are the new gold mine if eventually Bitcoin goes up to $1 million dollars per coin this will make bad actors to even want to commit more crimes just to secure people's Bitcoin.

Someone has already posted that there is already a breach on a 3rd party that services the order for a hardware wallet. So for sure they might have got ridden of that services but the damages has been done.

My worries is couriers or what are they called have your address and they know what you are buying since the receipt sometimes comes with the item glued to the case or package.

Call me crazy but I am just thinking ahead.

A P.O box might be a good option as well if your country has that sort of services.

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

Yes, but perhaps they are thinking that it's too much to handle for them to include the shipping themselves that's why they got a "reliable" 3rd party until they are not as they are now a target of hackers as well.

One solution is to create your own wallet. There's a lot of threads that discusses that.

[MiF]

I don't think it's just about having the address of a delivery point, but about how long it is available, and how many systems it goes through. The manufacturer may have deleted their records after delivery, but the courier and fulfillment partner or third party may have different retention periods.

I'd also like to see the manufacturers reduce the amount of information they provide their logistics partners in the first place as well. The fewer data points there are in the chain the less opportunity data can have for being exploited later. Design privacy into the buying process, rather than let the buyer figure it out later.

[lionheart78]

Lately I've been thinking, is it really safe that couriers are the ones shipping hardware wallet that we purchased from official hardware wallet companies to our homes?

So, who do you think must deliver the hardware wallet purchased from the company?  Besides, these harware wallet has no funds yet, and the courier will not risk their reputation for an unfunded wallet.

My worries is couriers or what are they called have your address and they know what you are buying since the receipt sometimes comes with the item glued to the case or package.

Call me crazy but I am just thinking ahead.

All things have their own risk, why not worry for people who buy mansions and have the sales agent tour them on their own house?  I cannot deny that there are people who uses this kind of service as disguise to execute their ill intent plan.  But in normal cases, delivery guys don't want to do anything that will trouble them and cost them their source of living.

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

It is a good idea but it is somehow hard to execute even though it is feasible.  The company need to establish a private courier service that is exlusively for the company use only and they have to establish this service in every part of the world if they plan to deliver the item door to door.  Now do you think it is that easy?

[Peanutswar]

Most of the hardware wallet has their third party delivery couriers and I guess its part of their contract to make sure that the package is safe and they will get their hardware wallet in time now this is the reason why most of them recommend to do always double check the package upon arrival and there is an unboxing evidence you can give as a proof once you get doubt, again if ever small details and you made a doubt request for a replacement because we wanted to avoid having an issue here most of us stack a huge amount of crypto into our hardware wallets.

You are lucky enough if you have capability to buy a hardware wallet direct to their store but we know that there is no branch every countries instead only have authorized resellers base even on their websites.

[bitbollo]

In some countries it's already well known that they need to erase data (likewise PRIVARY RULES).
Even if they don't do this, I would avoid to spread panic about this argument (despite I am not an admirer of Hardware wallets...)

See details:
- many addresses used can be just "delivery address" or third party users/persons.
- you can't ever known if the same user that has received this hardware on that address... is still living there...
- did someone expect that an user could have a "balance" enough to justify all this effort, expense (and even we are supposing it could be easy to take the harware and the password ?)

Many people robbed in the streets are just showing and owning expensive items that are easy to take and easy to resell (gold, jewellery, cars, watches...) ... Also there are some rich areas that are just targeted.
They don't need an address at this point of a specific user, you can track a full area (imagine Via MonteNapoleone in Milano one of the richest places in europe).

About bitcoiners&crypto influencers, anyone at this point... you don't need a courier data, for their data
Most of them are well known, they join parties, events in public, they travel, they provide enough data that could be easily accessed (in private or governative databases).

[EFS]

All kinds of things have already been exposed by the time we get to this. The government allowed all our private information to be leaked, even 13yo kids can access the identity information of the entire country and a lot of other private data through Telegram. While that data is being bought and sold, people are worried about shipping companies keeping the addresses where Bitcoin hardware wallets are delivered.

If you're going to become a target, you'll become one. Find ways to protect yourself.

I also have some old hardware wallets lying around, but I don't use them. In general I don't find hardware wallets trustworthy. Many incidents we've seen also show why we shouldn't trust them.

[spiker777]

Lately I've been thinking, is it really safe that couriers are the ones shipping hardware wallet that we purchased from official hardware wallet companies to our homes?

Who should be doing that then? obivously couriers are the one who handle the shippings. that's literally their purpose. lol
do you have a better alternative?

Since Bitcoin and crypto are the new gold mine if eventually Bitcoin goes up to $1 million dollars per coin this will make bad actors to even want to commit more crimes just to secure people's Bitcoin.

You are right about that, in fact physical attacks on bitcoin and crypto holders are increasing everyday. If you look online you'll read many news reports about kidnapping and extortion attempts. That is already a major security risk.

My worries is couriers or what are they called have your address and they know what you are buying since the receipt sometimes comes with the item glued to the case or package.

Call me crazy but I am just thinking ahead.

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

I don't think hardware companies have the capabilities to handle worldwide shipping. couriers services are only option for us to buy hardware wallets from the other side of the world. There has to be some other and better solution to this problem.

[Asuspawer09]

~

I guess this was just something that we cannot fully prevent, since there will always going to be a risk for everything. Everything you order or buy online would get delivered to your address, that includes a name, number etc. So there will always be that kind of privacy risk that might leak if you are sensitive about that, There are some discreet packaging where your name or order will not be put on your parcel, I do it sometimes on some parcels but I guess they could still trace it, if this is more like a inside job or something, I mean if they were really planning to look at it they could make a way of it, it was just like if they want to steal your money there are ways that they can do, even though your door is lock, if they really wanted to they could just destroy your door something like that.

Wouldn't it be better for hardware wallet companies to handle shipping themselves and they will be able to erase data after delivery becomes a success? People who bought hardware wallet shouldn't be known by anybody.

What if the hardware wallet companies decided to handle this entire shipping of the wallet to their various customers across the world I yet there is no safety with the information provided to them for delivery, you cannot predict anything that could happen as long as there is a personal information involved that is traceable to individuals identity, except if they will only deliver to each country by a unique code that we have to come within wallet purchase without users filling for kyc.

So maybe if you really wanted to hide your identity or have some privacy, you could have it ship to a different address first before even going straight to your home address, but it was just hassle I guess, wasn't worth the hassle if you're not really a high-profile one, maybe, I mean just like what i've said there were always the risk of it so they could make a lot of ways to trace you it wasn't impossible to do.

I think the courier is in fault here if the information leaks since they are the one that is handling it, it should be discreet and maybe only the right employees should know it, or maybe not putting the company and the item name that they bought, to avoid this.