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The Importance of Securing Your Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies are rewarding when it comes to investment or holding them for a long time, but there is something we must bring our attention to and that is the responsibility of protecting our cryptocurrencies. So, in today's blog I am going to talk about how to protect your cryptocurrency, especially if you are using a centralized exchange. I am also going to discuss an incident that happened with one of the members from a Discord channel where I am also a member, so that will help you understand why sometimes it is very important to keep an eye on your security phrases from time to time.
Security Practices for Centralized Exchanges
First of all, what you have to do in case you are using a centralized exchange. There are a few things you can take care of and I am going to share them with you. First, you have to make sure that you do not save your passwords on the browser. It is better to remember them, just memorize them so that you can use them whenever you want to log in to your account. Second, make sure that you have set some security options for the login password. For example, setting a two factor authentication or setting up the local security options as well.
Changing Your Passwords
Apart from that, you can also change your password from time to time because it is not necessary to stick with that one particular password and live with it forever. Especially if you have saved your password on a desktop, you must change it from time to time so that in case of any mishap, your funds will be protected. Today we have left behind these things, we don't remember our passwords nor we change it from time to time.
Beware of the Scam Links
When you use a centralized exchange, there are many links that are scam links of those websites or maybe in the name of those websites that people click and tend to lose their assets. For example, there was an incident where a man clicked a link to earn one hundred dollars on Binance and it was not actually an official link that was given by Binance. It was a scam link. So once he clicked on it, he compromised his funds and lost his money. So make sure you never fall for such scams where you are shown an advertisement offering you some money for completing a few tasks. Never do it unless and until you are sure that it is coming from the official forum.
Seed Phrases and Their Importance
Now let us talk about the seed phrases. I am going to take the example of Hive Blockchain itself and share the incident where I told you how a Discord member lost his account. So there are five phrases, key phrases on Hive Blockchain. Posting key, Active key, Memo key, Master key, and Owner key. Out of these keys, you should never save your master key on the desktop. Be it any browser, no matter what, never save your master key on the browser. In fact, never use your master key because it is the most important key among all. Second of all, never save your active key as well because the active key is also an important key which is used to make fund transfers and that is why you should never save it. You can save your posting key because it is used for posting and you are going to be using it every day. So you can save it, but if you can go by without saving it, it is going to be even better for you.
A Real Life Example to learn from
So this person, who recently realized that his account was compromised, immediately contacted the owner who was set as the recovery account for his personal account. It was actually Tipu, and if you are using Hive Blockchain, you might already know who Tipu is. He is one of the curation accounts that is used to curate content all around the blockchain. Thankfully, he was able to connect with Tipu, and probably he will be able to recover his account. From this incident, what you should learn is that you must know what a recovery account is, what the use of it is, and how to use your recovery account in case your account is compromised. For that, there are many blogs created by people here, and even sections in the FAQs where you can go and read about it. So make sure to educate yourself on this topic.
To conclude the blog, I want to say that at the end of the day we are all humans and we are not perfect in anything. Even after taking these measures there can be incidents where you may lose your money. So make sure you learn and keep learning about how to protect your funds. It is not necessary to follow only what I have said. There can be many other ways as well. You can add to the methods in which you protect your funds, and one of them can be to diversify your money on different exchanges or on different accounts. If you have any other ways to protect the funds in your mind, you can share them in the comment section.
Thank you for reading this blog till here.
Happy trading everyone and may your funds remain secure.
