Newbies Initiative Task 3: Never be too lax about the security of your hive account

Image made by @projectmamabg

Hello hivers

My journey in learning about hive through the newbies initiative has been superb. For the third lesson, we learnt about hive keys and security. I will be writing what I know so far about security on hives. Security is very important and should not be taken lightly, especially concerning our finances. We must always be security conscious, to prevent hackers from stealing our accounts. Each security measures can go a long way in protecting our accounts.

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In your opinion, what are the best ways of keeping your keys safe?

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I remember around September 2022 when most people's accounts on hive were hacked. And most of the hacked accounts were linked to those who are using google drive, some people lost a lot during the hack. In my opinion, saving your keys in Google Drive is not safe, and neither is saving on the cloud because clouds get hacked too. One of the best ways to save your keys is offline; make a printed copy of your hive keys or you could write them down on paper and store them in a very safe place. Another way is with a trusted person, I recommend you use someone who you are sure about, who wouldn't betray you because people tend to turn to betrayals especially if money is involved. Also, you could save your keys to various encrypted thumb drives, encryption helps keep your keys safe.

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How do you check your recovery account and what process is needed to recover an account?

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Firstly, when you have no access to your account due to your keys being stolen or your account being hacked, this is when you recover your account. A recovery account is a trustee whom you have set to help you recover your account in case something happens.

To check your recovery account, you go to your blog. Am using the peakd frontend, so I will be showing you how to do a check from Peakd.

The first thing you do is click on your blog,

then you click on the three buttons beside settings, it will bring out options and then click on the keys & permission

This will then take you to the recover account page

Click on the recover account and you would see who is your recovery account

You can see that @ocdb is set as my recovery account, should anything happens I would be contacting them to recover my account.

To recover an account

• first, click on this link https://reazuliqbal.com/HiveAccountRecovery/

• then click the recover account

This will take you to the recover account page, and here you have some steps to follow to recover an account.

• for step one

• then step 2

This particular step is the reason, it is recommended that you use someone you trust very well as your trustee, so a trustee or recovery account should be selected carefully

• step 3

![IMG_20221103_201430.jpg](

The steps above is how to recover an account

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Whom did you choose as your account trustee, and why?

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As mentioned earlier, @ocdb is my recovery account and this is because @ocdb is one of the most reliable and trusted here on hive, and my keys are safe with them. No account can be recovered through ocdb without going through the proper screening to ascertain the claim over the account, this is one of the reasons I choose them because I know that hackers can not easily recover my account from them. Also, should anything happen to my account, I can contact them through discord.

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List the various types of keys and state their use cases.

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Hive keys are very important, we can hardly operate on the blockchain without hive keys. We have public keys and private keys. The private keys are keys that can only be seen and used by the owner of the account, while the public keys are keys that can be seen by everyone on the blockchain.

For both public and private keys, we have the following keys

• master keys
• active keys
• posting keys
• owner keys
• memo keys

master key

This key is used to derive all my other keys. This key when stolen can be used to steal tokens on hive.

Active key

This key is used for sending tokens, to power up or power down, to vote for witnesses, to convert Hive Dollars, and can also be used to log in to Hive.

posting key

This key is used to post, comment, edit and reblog. For instance to make a post on Peakd you need to put in your posting key and grant permission to Peakd to use your posting key before your post can be published.

Owner key

This key is very important, it can be used to generate new keys even new master keys, can be used to recover an account and can also be used to decline voting rights.

memo key

Memo key is used to send an encrypted message on the blockchain. It is also required when you want to make transactions such as transfers from Binance to hive.

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Appreciation

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A big thank you to @newbies-hive, @hive-learners and to the newbies-initiative teams @starstrings01, @samostically @theycallmedan and the @aliento for this initiative that awards us the opportunity to learn. Shout out to the queen of engagement herself @hopestylist my amiable team lead for all your support and advice. I also appreciate all my teammates, you guys are the best.