Hello Hive Learners,
The time has come to talk about the safety of your accounts, hacking, and how to set up a recovery account.
Let’s start with some basics of online safety (regardless of what type of account it is and whether it’s web2 based or it’s a web3)
The basics of online security
The strength of passwords
One account, one password
Keeping your passwords safe
Possible causes resulting in your account being hacked
As mentioned before, one possible cause is to have a weak password. Another possible cause is to lose your password or keys and someone finds it and uses it against you.
Besides these two types, we also have:
Malware - it is the most common and it includes malicious software that enters the device you are using and can control your device, steal information and documents, monitor the passwords you use when typing, etc. It most frequently enters through a download of the software (email attachments are the most frequent types). Some of the famous malware are Trojans, Worms, Spyware, and Adware.
Phishing attacks - they normally include e-mails that seem to arrive from a trusted third party and they are used to extract sensitive information from you (e.g. passwords or other personal information). Sometimes they include links to “official websites” where you may introduce sensitive information or it can have malware that will automatically download to your device.
Cookie theft - is very common when a person uses an unprotected network or Wi-Fi, public Wi-Fi, or cybercafe are often targeted for this type of hack. When we use them cookies that contain browsing history with our usernames and passwords are being sent through the hacker’s system in order to extract this information.
There are many other ways of hacking that professionals use to obtain our sensitive information so we must stay vigilant in order to protect ourselves.
Hive Keys
When talking about our “passwords” on Hive, we talking about a set of 5 keys: Master, Owner, Active, Posting, Memo
The master key is the main one and it’s the most important one. With it we can generate new keys if it will be necessary, we can also edit the keys we have.
The owner key is used for the recovery of an account or to change the keys
The active key is used for approval of actions that include the transfer of Hive, e.g. powering up your Hive account, buying and selling of tokens, staking, etc.
The posting key is used for writing posts, commenting, and voting. It is the key we will be using most frequently.
The memo key is used for the encryption or decryption of messages on the Hive blockchain.
Here is an example of keys you have and how they look (remember to keep them safe and don’t share them with anyone).
If you don’t know what your keys are and you have access to Peakd, you can easily go to “Wallet” which you can find in the top right corner where your thumbnail and name are located.
Once inside your wallet, press on “Account Actions” and select “Keys and Permissions”.
Once inside, at the bottom of the screen, you will have the option to “Reveal All Keys”. In order to do it, you will have to use your Master key. For security reasons, I will not show you how it looks once you reveal them (but it looks similar to the picture above where you can see an example of the keys).
A Recovery Account - what is it and how to set it up?
What is a recovery account?
A recovery account is a different account than yours that help you restore yours in case it gets hacked. With it, you can change your keys within 30 days of your account being hacked.
When opening an account we are automatically given a recovery account, however, it is advisable that we change it to our second account or if we don’t have one to a person we trust.
How to set up your recovery account?
In Peakd, in the same place where we can see our account keys, we can see another tab called “Recovery account”. In this tab, at the bottom, we can see two options (buttons). We will use “Change recovery account” for this setup.
Once we have selected “Change recovery account” we will add the username of the person we trust and we can reach out to in case of emergency we add our owner key and we press the “Confirm” button.
Finally, we can see the change being put into motion and it will take effect in 30 days. We should see an image like the one below. With that, we will be certain that all the steps were done properly.
I hope you have learned something new regarding your account safety and that you will put this measure into force in order to protect yourself. Stay safe out there! 🙂
The first image (the thumbnail) was created using Canva.com
The second image is a screenshot of the keys that one would obtain if they are to open a new account with LeoFinance
All other images are screenshots from Peakd
The dividers used in the text are the property of ThePeakStudio