You know, what you learned a few years ago doesn’t even compare to what you know now.
Think about it... the mistakes you made back then might come back to bite you today. You might find yourself wondering, why is this happening to me? I’ve improved, I know better now.
That old crypto wallet you started your journey with? It might not be as secure as you think. Why? Because you might have accidentally approved some free DeFi offers on it. Or maybe you gave access to your wallet without realizing it.
It’s kind of funny, your funds might still be sitting there, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe. To play it safe, I recommend setting up a new wallet and leaving behind those careless habits.
This time around, don’t give out permissions on the wallet you want to keep your longer-term coins in. If you’re into airdrops, use a separate wallet for those and don’t store any assets in it.
There’s definitely more to explore on this topic.
Use different wallets for your different purposes. Main wallets for big funds and important things while other wallets for small funds and things like interactions with smart contracts for airdrops.
Remember to revoke smart contract access when you are done.
How to revoke token approval
https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker
https://revoke.cash/
https://app.unrekt.net/
The idea is simple, don't connect a funded wallet to a third party site most especially those that needs direct access to your funds.like I will always say, when it comes security, to the bitcoin structure are better than this. You don't think people who bought bitcoin in the early days and still didn't move Thier coins would be scared of some flaws the new updated wallet version solved. If you are involved in altcoins you have to be more than smart. A single mistake can ruin your entire portfolio. I've seen many young investors making tremendous mistakes and unfortunately for them there's no way you reverse the stolen funds.
Come to think of it, the idea behind smart contract has too many flaws that hackers has continued to exploit. It's best to take cautious while using them..
The real advice is, don't use your main wallet to interact with Dapp platforms. Well, most people don't realize that when they're new. But I agree with the op's advice; it's not just about protecting against hacking, but also about excessive surveillance (if they care about privacy).
Those who often did not suffer anything that made them lose their bitcoins even after holding for over a decade are usually knowledgeable about security & technological ethics.
It is often advisable for newbies to move their coin to a new wallet different from what they started with this is because to avoid flaws they might have left in their older wallets: maybe how they stored seed phrase, interact with smart contracts or any other security risks.
Maintain separate wallets, one for your long-term crypto holdings that can be a cold storage for better security and then one for trading that you keep moving funds from exchange to wallet addresses often and then another one for free tokens like airdrops and more as per your requirements, stop using web-based wallets, which are more prone to being hacked.
There is no such wallet or widespread known for others. And there is anonymity for the protection of assets, this is the maximum security measure. Yes, it can happen but you will not be completely safe if you inadvertently access a scam site and all the information on your device goes into the hands of others. As you experienced 1 year ago, today you are in the opposite position and for that you should be careful and take care of your assets. You think that scammer is following you to steal your assets. Therefore, take responsibility for your assets and strengthen the security measures.
This is a good advise to newbies and some old wallets users, because there is an alternative if scammers have access to one of your wallet it will not make you run mad, because you can use the remaining coins in the second wallet to achieve what you want. I know some people that are use to one wallet and the wallet carry big amount of coins and if anything like scammer find their way to such wallet, it will cause financial damage, because it will be hard for the person to gather such amount of money to fix his or her life.
Why new crypto wallet are safe at time, is because many scammers have not find the address of the wallet yet, anything that will make that wallet to reach one year and some months it will make the scammers to tracy the wallet to try their luck by hacking the wallet.
If you cannot afford to buy a hardware wallet and you have an old computer sitting on your desk, you can use it to set up electrum cold storage wallet and generate your private keys offline. I think this is more safer than a hardware wallet because you generated the private keys yourself and you have the full confidence that nobody has seen it or tampared with it. This is only a bitcoin wallet, those that love altcoins can buy a hardware open source noncustodial wallet.
I have abandoned almost all the old wallets I used in receiving altcoins, I did that for the safety of my asset and what I do sometimes is that if I sensed that my wallet is not secured or I just have a feeling that my coins are not safe in the address I have them, I will create a new address and transfer my asset there. I don't do it for fun but because I don't have a hardware wallet and I always feel insecure with all these software wallet which is download on the same PC that we are using for work. Scammers are using different virus attacks to steal private keys and password and that's why my insecurity is so high. Although a your coins can still be safe even though you don't use hardware wallet but you can have a seperate device that is only specifically used for your coins holding and then you also use multiple address hold your coins instead of putting every of your coins in just a place.
Problem:
It's super easier for a hacker to hack you on altcoin networks than on Bitcoin.
My point of view:
I'm not against dApps and development in this field. In fact, I like the idea of ownership on the web, despite the fact that I haven't seen a single use-case where it's properly implemented.
What I'm trying to say is that there's only one way to be safe in "web3" and, as all of you said, this is account separation.
Steps to be safe(r):
- Create a wallet where you'll store coins, NFTs etc. that you'll never sign anything with.
- Create a wallet on your browser with money simply to sign in various dApps, DeFi protocols and cover the gas fees.
- Ideally, use only Bitcoin... And no, all these bitcoin-related stuff that you've heard about count as altcoins as well
Hardware wallets are not that expensive these days, and they are starting around $50, or even cheaper if you go with something like Satochip cards.
They are certainly better than hot wallets, but I think good backup of seed words is more important.
They can hack anything if they get your keys.
Problem with most shitcoins is their connection with browser wallets and extensions.
A hodling wallet should not be a hot wallet or worse be connected to any app or website as well as other sorts of services like DeFi or to sign contracts. It's relatively easy to share your funds across a minimum of 2 wallets just to ensure you are not risking your funds on a contract or similar.
If it's about abandoning a wallet you used previously, I don't really advise it except in cases where the keys and seed has been compromised already else it's good you still keep it.
* Multi-coin wallets are a hack waiting to happen
* Hot wallets are a hack waiting to happen
While I do agree that creating new wallet has advantages sometimes, eg after you've made a huge lot of transactions, with a lot of your addresses (eg change addresses) you may want a clean start now and then.
But if you have anything valuable I recommend keeping it somewhere safer than a hot wallet, re-created anew now and then or now. Hardware Waller is my choice, but cold storage is also good.
Just make sure you don't mix up the backup seed of your current wallet with the previous one, because then it will not end well.
There are some cases where revoking the authorization still do not actually work out, this is when either your seed phrase or keys has already been stolen because they can simply just import those keys or phrase in another wallet and still have access to it or that wallet actually already has a sweeper bot active on it. The easiest way to know if any of this is on the wallet is to send a little amount into that wallet and of swept immediately then that wallet is gone.
But also yet again I always advice that even if its a suspicion that you might granted that wallet access to the internet or any platform at that point its best to actually just move away from it totally
The tweet you took the screenshot from specifically mentions that a hardware wallet doesnt protect you from exploited contracts that you have authorized to spend your tokens. It is always good practice to check if you have any active contract approvals and revoking their permission. You dont necessarily need to create a new wallet altogether, unless you have many approvals on different networks and it would be more practical to start over with a fresh new wallet.
Creating multiple wallets to use is not bad, and it is good actually.
Using different wallets is like using different change addresses in a same wallet but it is better. Addresses in a same wallet can be linked together if in your practice you choose UTXOs from different addresses in a same wallet for your transactions.
However, this practice of creating and using different wallets require users to back up different wallets for access and recovery later. It requires a little bit more steps from wallet creation, backup creation, backup test for recovery and backup storage and maintenance but it is worthy extra time to do for your privacy.
Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO).
I'm here. I've been separating my main wallet and retro wallet for years, and so far so good. It's good to create crypto wallet for the differential purpose. However, it will be so good if we're learning how to identify the suspicious defi or site to connect with.
Someone can create multi wallet for the safety purpose, but when they lack of knowledge about what scam site is. He can be hacked too. When we actively did retro drop, we often connected to various site. The knowledge will help us to avoid the scam site.
Beside that it will be far better to use metamask or okx or pockey universe to filter whether the site has a potential to be a scam site. So when we visit a suspicious site, we're gonna get a notice about the potential of harmful site from those extensions.
I like that feature of metamask.
This really helps at all when someone who has no idea of what website they're visiting. Even they're sometimes reckless of just clicking links, if metamask has alarmed them that it's a suspicious website.
That will discontinue the user for proceeding on that link because of that feature.
As for the wallets that we're using, it's okay to start with these wallets and separate your active from your main. And aim to own a hardware wallet when you are in profit, that's the best investment on this space for your assets.
Yes, it is a great feature but you really should not rely on it as your only line of defense. Scammers are usually one step ahead of the blocklists.
If you are visiting a brand new site or a very sophisticated fake, MetaMask might not have it in their database yet, and it wont show you any warning at all. I have seen too many people get a false sense of security because of these "features."