

Guy accidentily deletes Bitcoin wallet with $8000 worth of Bitcoin in it - tinco
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bd1d1/i_think_i_just_lost_90btc_are_they_stolen_help/

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unimpressive
This reminds me of what my mom asked me after hearing about bitcoin for the
first time:

"Well, if the the money is stored on your computer, doesn't that mean that
anyone who controls your computer controls the money?" (Paraphrasing, that was
the gist of it.)

To which I gave an emphatic _yes_. I also pointed out that if you store your
credit card details on your computer, whoever controls your computer controls
your credit card. Though at least with that theres some amount of insurance
against fraud.

~~~
eric970
I'm not an expert on the matter, but to be fair there are lots of things you
can do to secure your wallet. Some of them are even discussed in that thread.

~~~
tinco
There is only one way that is close to being fully secure and that is what the
guy who lost his money did. Have your bitcoin wallet on a bootable linux usb
stick that you only use for bitcoin transactions.

~~~
esrauch
Why not encrypt your wallet and back it up?

~~~
tinco
Because that's not secure, it's just a nightmare waiting to happen.

~~~
esrauch
How is it not secure to do that, assuming you have a sufficiently long
decryption key? It seems more secure than what than having $8k on a single
drive that can easily fail at any time.

~~~
tinco
Because anyone who has root on your device can just monitor your keypresses.
It doesn't matter how long your decryption key is. Ofcourse storing it on a
single drive isn't a good idea either :)

