It has been fun to know and understand more about Hive, I am so glad to be on this program. Every week there is always something to learn on hive through newbie initiatives and I believe that there is more to learn about hive and I also believe that the newbie initiative has more to teach.
As usual, on Sunday we had our meeting and discussion on hive keys and security, in this meeting @depressedfuckup talked and elaborated on the uses of hive keys and how we can keep them safe while @starstrings01 also made contributions.
For the week's task, I partnered with @phyna. In our discussion, we shared our thoughts on what we learned at the meeting. Phyna talked about how important it is to guide your keys because it is what holds your account, she also made an example of someone who has lost their account due to lack of security.
I concluded that is crucial to keep your keys well even when you are not yet big on hive because when you grow big on hive, you might even forget to safeguard your keys or it might even be too late.
Let’s see what I have learned
Assuming @phyna mistakenly dropped her active key on a discord channel, what steps will I take to keep her account safe from any potential threats?
Firstly, I would advise her to delete the message with the active keys and then transfer the assets to a trusted account, she should change her keys immediately, in order to safeguard her keys.
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What if she doesn’t know how to change her keys?
Since I am used to Peakd, but you can also use hive blog I would love to break down the steps to change her keys using Peakd.
Go to your profile page. Click on the icon that looks like ‘. . .’,
click on keys and permission, which will lead you to the next step.
We want to click on ‘change password’ because that is exactly what we want.
You will be required to paste your owner key that is used in changing keys. So, just paste and generate a new password.
Easy right? Of course, it is.
I would definitely recommend some methods for her to keep her keys safe, because what is the point of changing keys when her new keys are also open to threats?
My suggestion to safeguard keys
Writing down the keys: This is one of the safest methods, as you write down your keys and keep it among your files or anywhere you keep important documents, if you are too lazy to write you can just print it out and store it.
Storing on Google Chrome or Drive: Google Chrome has a way of saving passwords, it is good in that when you are not with your phone you can log in to your Google Chrome Account using another phone and you can access your passwords. In the same way, you can store it in Google Drive
Altering or making certain changes to your keys: This is one of my favorites because it is only me who knows what I changed in my keys, anyone can access other methods by mistake but even if someone saw this by mistake, they won’t be able to use it because it is not surely correct.
It is important to remember what you altered (either add or subtract) in your keys, so it is advisable to use something you are familiar with.
Careful with links: There are a lot of fake links especially giveaway links that might require one to put in their keys. It is crucial not to click on links that are not trusted. Any strange links should be avoided.
You can also have a trustee account.
How would I explain to my partner the uses of hive keys?
There are five keys that are important in hive, which are;
Posting key: This key is one of the most used keys, it is for commenting, reblogging, posting, and following.. e.t.c
Active key: This key is used in anything that deals with transactions or money. You can use this key to transfer money, vote witnesses, power up or power down.. e.t.c
Memo key: This key is used to send encrypted messages, and memos in transfers that you don’t want others to see. If you want to make a message encrypted, add # before the message. The person the message is sent to would also need a memo key to open it.
Owner key: This key is the most important, it is used to recover an accounts, change keys, and change passwords. It so important to keep this well.
Master key: The master key is the password, which is also used to recover all our keys. Just how a master key can open all door. In case you misplaced the keys, you can recover them by using the master key.
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