It is extremely important that you read every section in this article.
Source: https://electroneum.com/best-practices/
Best Practices
Below are a list of the best practices to help protect you and your Electroneum accounts.
Security
Websites and apps
The official websites that Electroneum provide are electroneum.com & my.electroneum.com.
Only ever download the app via the link on our official website electroneum.com, don’t download apps by searching for Electroneum or visit websites claiming to be Electroneum and NEVER enter your account details into these apps or websites. These sites are phishing sites and are used to gather your information to access your account. We will NEVER email you a log in link or app link, we will only ever direct you to electroneum.com or my.electroneum.com
Secure your email account
Make sure that you use a strong password for your email account and if available set up 2 factor authentication (2FA) which could be adding a secondary email address, adding a PIN number, linking to an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator etc. This adds another level of security to your account and will help prevent other people being able to access your account maliciously. Ensure that the password you use to protect your email account is unique and has never been used by you anywhere else (see note below about using the same password on multiple sites).
Secure your Electroneum account
When creating/editing your Electroneum account we require multiple levels of security information to help protect your account. You will be taken through step by step. It is very important that when creating/editing your account you use a strong unique password that you don’t use anywhere else . Many websites and service providers have been hacked in the past and users details, which may contain your information, have been shared online. If you use the same password as you did with one of those accounts then people may be able to access your account with this leaked information.
Offline Wallet
What is an offline wallet?
An offline wallet is a more secure alternative to storing your coins in your app/website wallet. All Electroneum wallets consists of three mathematically linked keys, called the public key , the private view key , and the private spend key . As a rough comparison, you can think of the public key as your bank account number (this is your ETN wallet address that people can use to send you money), the private view key gives the ability to view your bank balance but not spend anything, and the private spend key as your bank PIN code, as it allows the owner of the key to spend the money (ETN!) in the account.
Each key has a specific purpose:
- Public key (or wallet address) is used when depositing ETN into your wallet, this key can be given out publicly to anyone that wants to pay you ETN and poses no security risk to your wallet.
- Private view key is used to view the balance of your wallet but not spend your ETN. This key should be kept private.
- Private spend key is used to spend the ETN in your wallet. If anyone gets access to this they can take all of your ETN so this must be kept private, only YOU need to know what this key is . If any app, website, company, person etc ask for this assume it is a scam and do not give it to them. Only ever import an offline wallet with the official Electroneum app and please see the note “Using your offline wallet” below.
These keys make up your wallet and anyone who has access to them has control over your wallet and your ETN.
Your Electroneum online wallet or (web wallet or app wallet) is accessed by the official Electroneum app or via my.electroneum.com. On this account we look after your Private Keys for you to make accessing your Electroneum coins (ETN) easier.
An offline wallet is a wallet that has been generated without the keys being stored anywhere on the internet (hence “offline”). You can even run the offline wallet software from a usb stick on a PC or Laptop that is not connected to the internet.
Why use an offline wallet?
Anyone with access to your wallet keys has control over your wallet, therefore using the most secure method of storing your coins is of the utmost importance. Ultimately every system connected to the internet is potentially vulnerable to hacks. We take precautions to safeguard your Private Keys (such as keeping them encrypted), but there is always more risk of a hack on a web based service than there is from an offline wallet which is not connected to the internet. As well as that consider the following; your personal offline wallet printed on a piece of paper poses a far less attractive opportunity for a potential hacker/thief then a centralised system of thousands of wallets. Electroneum is dedicated to ensuring the safety of your website/app accounts and ETN however we recommend that to increase the security you use an offline wallet.
How to Create an offline wallet?
To create an offline wallet, follow these steps:
- Go to downloads.electroneum.com.
- Under the ‘Offline Wallet Generator’ header, click Browser Version. For added security, right-click and choose “Open in New Incognito Window” (you can also download the generator to your computer by clicking on Download ZIP. We recommend using the latest version of Google Chrome Browser and disabling all Chrome Extensions.
- Read the instructions carefully and then click on “Let’s Get Started”
- To add lots of randomness to your wallet wiggle your mouse around the screen until the “Randomness” bar at the bottom is full.
- Your wallet is now ready for download. Click on “Save Wallet as PDF” and choose a location to store your PDF wallet.
- Once downloaded, you can open the PDF and print it out.
Securing your offline wallet
Remember that even though the offline wallet is a more secure method of storing your ETN, anyone that gets access to those keys will have complete control over your wallet so the print out must be kept secure. Consider making backups as if you lose the print out or it gets water damaged or burns up in a house fire for example then the wallet will be lost forever. You might want to consider keeping a digital copy or two somewhere safe on a USB stick (simple keep the PDF file safe). If you are more experienced you can even encrypt the PDF file with your chosen encryption software for additional security. Just remember if you lose access to the Private Keys you have lost the ETN and nobody can ever recover it.
Using your offline wallet
It is also recommended that for added security, when you have imported ETN from an offline wallet (this would require you to use the private keys either within our app or CLI tools) that you transfer the FULL BALANCE (our app does this automatically) and then create another offline wallet which has never been used and transfer any surplus ETN you’d like to protect to that new offline wallet. If you have a very large ETN balance you might want to use a number of offline wallets (remember you can have as many as you like at no cost except the small transfer fee to move the ETN to and back from the wallet).
