Given the recent Ledger event and the increasing Bitcoin price, we believe it is essential to understand data privacy, online safety and how best you can protect your digital assets.
Data Privacy and Security
Data privacy is paramount and has recently become a human right. This is evident in the social demands of average internet users and in the growing regulations designed to protect users’ privacy. Many internet users are unaware of this. Their history, physical location, online trends, and social media activities all contribute to creating an online map of their identity.
Information Security
Now that we have explained why data privacy is important, we have to discuss information security. Once companies collect these large numbers of data, these data must be stored. This is one of the reasons why many opponents of KYC/AML regulations require entities to keep enormous piles of personal identification data to create large honeypots for attackers.
This leads to the recent Ledger incident, where a data violation turned into a large public data dump. This has led to more than 1 million email addresses and more than 271,000 PIIs leaked into a public hacker forum for anybody to download free. This Information Personally Identifiable (PII) includes names, addresses, telephone numbers and other sensitive information. This is probably the worst thing a crypto investor can do; the only thing missing is their total crypto amount.
Crypto Wallet Security & Institutional Control
Institutional Control is one of the most important puzzles of a mainstream asset class regarding Crypto Wallet Security. Although the crypto community is proud to hold its assets, this brings inherently compromises.
The PROS of “hold your own keys” enables you to bring your money anywhere and use it as you like. This is a great advantage but requires not only technical knowledge but also practical knowledge.
The key is that it lets you open to malicious actors trying to carry out different kinds of attacks against you.
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Phishing Attacks: This is where an attacker sends a communication that leads a user to believe it is an authority figure (email, text message, telephone calls etc.). Many recent phishing attacks have been carried out against the victims of the Ledger breach. It even saw XRP owners lose more than $1.1 million. By studying these types of attacks and ensuring that you interact only with verified sources, you can prevent phishing attacks.
Physical Attacks: This may be the scariest and hardest attack to protect against. If an attacker knows you have Crypto Wallet Security and your physical location, they can use force to get you to hand over your assets. You can protect yourself from biological attacks by using privacy techniques and institutional control. This is why the wealthy are not targeted. They don’t keep their wealth at home; instead, they use institutional custodians.
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