DeepOnion - The Importance of Keeping Your Information Private

 The Importance of Keeping Your Information Private 

There have been growing concerns over the security of cryptocurrencies ever since the world was taken by storm with the emergence of leading cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.   

It is easy for prying eyes to access your private data if the cryptocurrency does not guarantee any privacy.  This may lead to mistrust in the currency as a result of false security.   

The primary reason why most people sought refuge in other cryptocurrencies was that the major cryptocurrencies in the crypto industry lacked enough security to ensure users’ information and transactions were kept private.    

DeepOnion is one of the best cryptocurrencies that guarantees privacy and anonymity. The number of scams and piracy continue escalating as more people keep streaming in the crypto market. This increases the safety concerns when buying, trading or holding cryptocurrencies. 

In this article, we will give you tips on keeping your information secure and how DeepOnion provides private and anonymous transactions to crypto-investors. It is important to understand how to safeguard your wallet and how you can keep your public and private keys safe.   

Security is the primary concern for those who invest in cryptocurrencies and DeepOnion thrives when it comes to offering 100% privacy and anonymity.    
 

The DeepOnion Wallet 

What is a cryptocurrency wallet? It is simply a virtual storage that allows you send, receive and store your cryptocurrencies. It does not actually store funds as in the case of a traditional wallet but it rather acts like a safe where you can store your private keys and public keys. Probably, some may wonder, “What are keys?”   

To make it simpler, we will use Paypal as an example. So, think of DeepOnion wallet as your PayPal account. Your public key will be the credentials you use to log into this account. Your private key is the same as your password. Finally, the DeepOnion address will be the email address you give out people if you want them to send some money to your account.      

It is also important to understand that you won’t need your account name and password to access your cryptocurrency account. A scammer only needs the private key to access the funds belonging to a particular ‘account’. The most crucial rule, of cryptocurrencies is that you should never share your private key with anyone.   

Don’t even show the key on camera or over Skype when making presentations. It is possible for a person to steal funds from a QR code that contains a private key.    
 

How to Store Your Cryptocurrency Safely 

It is essential to ensure that your private key is kept safe and secure. However, there are cases when a wallet can be accessed without the need of a private key. This usually happens in a situation where you are using a wallet that was given to you by a cryptocurrency exchange.   

There are various reasons why exchange wallets are used by crypto-investors. They are acquired when registering an account and allows you to buy and sell your cryptocurrencies easily. Anyone who uses exchange wallets as their primary storage means that they are trusting the exchange in ensuring their private keys are safe.   

However, this will be a twofold risk since you are no longer in control of your private keys. Another problem is that your cryptocurrency gets stored in the ‘hot’ wallet. This leads us to our next topic of discussion where we will talk about the different types of wallets, their benefits, and the risks associated.   
 

What Is The Difference Between Cold And Hot Wallets? 

There are two types of cryptocurrency wallets; hot and cold. The primary distinguishing factor between the two is that the hot storage is used when you want to keep the money for the short term while others will choose the cold storage if they intend to keep their money for the long term. However, it is important to understand the benefits and downsides of these wallets to guarantee the safety and security of your cryptocurrency.   
 

Hot Wallets 

Hot storage simply means that you will be storing your currency in an internet-ready device. The term ‘hot’ is derived from the connection itself. Any wallet on a device with a ready internet connection is called as a hot wallet and a few examples include exchange wallets, desktop clients, and mobile wallets.   

Depending on your needs, you can access you can easily access your funds using a hot wallet. This allows you to bring in a specific sum of money for easy access and convenience. It might seem convenient making transactions using a hot wallet but it comes with a huge downside. First and foremost, it is very easy for anyone to hack a hot wallet.   

Beginners should learn a lesson from the latest attacks especially on the major exchanges. It is essential to follow the steps for restoring your hot wallet if you want to keep some small amount in the wallet. This ensures that you don’t accidentally lose all your funds at one go. Your private key and seed words can help you restore your wallet easily.   
 

Reasons for Hot Wallets 

•    You can easily access your funds whenever you need them 

•    It offers faster transactions with its easy-to-use interface 

•    It comes with a variety of options for different devices
 

Reasons against Hot Wallets 

•    It can easily be infiltrated by hackers 

•    It is possible to lose your backup data 

•    Your wallet gets destroyed when your device is damaged. This means losing your investment in cryptocurrencies if you lack a backup of your seed phrase and private keys.   
 

Different types of Hot Wallets  

• Cloud Wallet (Online Wallet) 

There are a few good reasons that make online wallets the easiest to operate. You can easily create your account on any exchange service. You gain quick access to your wallet regardless of your location provided you have an internet connection.   

The primary concern with the cloud wallet is that your private key is normally stored on a different server. This is the same as giving away the essential key to hackers. Never store a lot of money when using an online wallet but just enough for performing quick transactions.   

• Desktop/ Mobile Wallets 

These are some of the popular choices that offer more security compared to the cloud wallets. A mobile wallet is convenient and all you need to do is to install an app your phone. Some mobile wallets that are most popular include CoPay and MyCelium.   

A desktop wallet is usually stored on a laptop or a PC. The only way you can access the wallet is the device where it was installed. Although it is secure, the only problem is that the money can only be accessed on the device storing the wallet.   

The reasons for desktop and mobile wallets is that they are vulnerable to virus attacks. It is possible for hackers to search for your information once they infiltrate your system with Trojans.   

• Multi-Signature Wallets 

Multi-Signature wallets usually act as a safe that can only be accessed by several keys. The reason why these wallets are preferred unlike the former is that they reduce the incidents of human error and provide an enhanced security for your currency. They also create a wallet that is more democratic and can be accessed by several people.   

Although multi-signature wallets may possess all the impressive features, it is important to bear in mind that they still fall under the category of hot wallets. This implies that they should also be used economically and when making quick transactions.   

Cold Wallets 

Unlike the hot storage, cold wallets are when your currency is kept in a device that is offline. The term ‘cold’ comes from the fact that an internet connection is not needed to access your funds. The cold storage is the most secure wallet compared to the hot storage. Those who want to keep their money for a longer duration, always opt for the cold wallets as they guarantee high security.   

It is also important to remember that cold wallets also have their share of risks. However, those risks can be greatly reduced by taking precautionary measured and following instructions provided. Cryptocurrency has caught the attention of hackers as it continues to gain more popularity with every year.   

Cold wallets were created to offer the most secure method of storing your currency.   
 

Reasons for Cold Wallets 

•    It is highly protected against cybercriminals and hackers because of its offline nature.   

•    You can easily store large amounts of money for the long term.   
 

Reasons against Cold Wallets 

•    It is not the best option when you want to make quick transactions 

•    It still remains prone to external damage 

•    It might have some complicated setup process for beginners
 

Different types of Cold wallets  

• Hardware Wallets 

The physical devices that are used to store cryptocurrencies are referred to as hardware wallets. They come in various forms and used by many people but are not immune to exploitations. The truth is that you will be exposing your currency to the company that manufactured your wallet, with the trust that they will not access your account using your private keys.   

It usually applies to people who directly obtained the wallet from the designated company. Those who also bought a wallet that is pre-owned may also be vulnerable. Note that you should never use a second-hand wallet regardless of the situation. Although the hardware wallets have their benefits, they have their cons too. There is a chance that they may be damaged or possibly get lost but can still be restored.   

This can be made possible when a backup is created just like a hot wallet. Your backup details should be stored in a secure place where you are the only person aware of the location. Remember, you can only access your wallet using your details thus it is important to be careful with how you store them.   

In a situation where something happens between you and a person with an idea of your private keys, it is important to transfer all your funds into an entirely new wallet.   

• Paper Wallets 

Paper wallets may be the safest method of how you can store your currency but there are several pointers that should be followed by every crypto investor. Always keep your own record. Remember, if you lose your private keys, then you also lose all your currency in your paper wallet.   

A paper wallet is a cold storage that allows your funds to be stored offline. Your public and private keys are usually printed on a piece of paper before they can be stored for safekeeping. These keys are incorporated in QR codes that can be scanned when making transactions. You don’t have to carry any piece of hardware and you don’t have to deal with cyber or virus attacks.   

The answer to whether a paper wallet is right for you depends on how and where you plan to use your cryptocurrencies. It might not be ideal for those who intend to spend their funds on a regular basis. It turns out to be more secure and reliable for those who keep their money for a longer period of time.   
 

Reasons against paper wallets 

•    They are prone to human error as you can accidentally tear or forget where you placed them.   

•    It can be stolen easily the fact that it has been printed on a piece of paper – even by taking a photo of the paper wallet. 

•    If not stored properly, it may be susceptible to natural disasters.   

•    It is fragile which means that it can be damaged easily over time 

•    The type of printer used can affect your papers drastically when creating backups.   
 

The best possible solution every crypto-investor can resort to is through diversification. This would mean creating multiple backups for your keys and keeping other portions of your currencies in cold wallets to ensure they can be easily restored. If you need to perform quick transactions, you can always use the hot wallets but bear in mind the benefits and downsides associated with each of them.   

How to be safe from phishing 

The most secure storage for keeping your currency is always at risk even if our tips are taken into account. Phishing is an attempt made by fraudsters to obtain sensitive and private details while disguising themselves as trustworthy entities. The common phishing attempts in the world of cryptocurrency usually come through chat platforms.   

These messages seem convincing when you take the first glance at them but the URL often point to a very different site. Scammers are more likely to exhaust all your investment in a matter of seconds once you follow such links. It is important to check and counter-check the URLs used to access online wallets, ICO websites, cryptocurrency exchanges and other websites related to cryptocurrencies.   

If you want to go to a website you want to use at the moment, it is important to verify the URL to determine the real website. Always avoid web links that have been shared with you in private. This ensures that you are using the correct link to safeguard the privacy and security of your cryptocurrencies.   
 

Why DeepOnion Offers the Best Privacy and Anonymity Compared To Other Cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum are some of the leading cryptocurrencies that have survived for some time despite their inherent flaws. DeepOnion analyzes the weaknesses of Bitcoin and focusses on how it can solve all these problems.   
 

The privacy flaws in Bitcoin 

BTC is built upon an immutable blockchain that is publicly available and distributed over a decentralized network supported by wallet users and miners. The privacy of a wallet address is irrevocably compromised since it is usually tied to a human identity, particularly through a commercial vendor or crypto exchange.   

It is impossible to regain user’s anonymity since they lose the remaining Bitcoin tied to their address. This scenario usually happens when performing a trade or when the BTC address is generated by the exchange before linked to your personal identity.   

Since your BTC address has been linked your identity, the exchange can accurately verify the number of Bitcoins you possess in both addresses – newly created and the anonymous BTC address. Government bodies or law enforcement agencies can also determine the amount of BTC in your wallet as well as your identity when the exchange is promoted to provide their customer details.   

The level of privacy that can be afforded by Bitcoin is entirely inadequate for adoption by the masses. This makes us conclude that the ‘anonymous’ nature quoted for Bitcoin is nothing but a fallacy.   

The anonymous flaws in Bitcoin 

Another area of weakness for Bitcoin is anonymity since the node traffic is usually sent to in an unencrypted state. The peer address of Bitcoin is IPs that are clearly visible and presents a grand opportunity for the network interruption and targeted attacks. The ‘getpeerinfo’ command acts as a source of the information that is trivially obtained from the freely available Bitcoin wallets.   

Disclosing your computer wallet’s public IP address without adequate perimeter is not only considered unsecure but is also a bad practice. Some of the potential risks associated with it include the ability to establish a link between the wallet address of the user and its IP address. This further discloses the identity of the coin holder and may lead to an intelligence-based attack.    

In order to safeguard your financial assets and protect your identity, it is an imperative action for the IP address of the client’s wallet is protected. The implementation of the anonymous TOR IP addresses is one of the steps taken by DeepOnion in mitigating the risk.   

The Vision of DeepOnion 

Most of the privacy and security problems experienced by Bitcoin have been addressed by DeepOnion in an attempt to provide the best alternative to the leading cryptocurrencies. All this is made possible since the core stack integrates a myriad of technologies that help solve the problem.   

The whole network operates over The Onion Router (TOR) network which makes it difficult to ascertain the identity of the user without compromising large segments of the TOR network. It is one of the processes that can’t be short-changed by the use of VPNs which implies that you cannot determine the location of a DeepOnion user.   

On the other hand, there is no encryption of traffic by Bitcoin which led to the proposal of BIP 151 to enable packet snooping that would determine the connection of an IP address to the BTC network. This could lead to legal ramifications in an event where Bitcoin is illegal in your jurisdiction. It also discloses information that every person would wish to keep private such as using BTC and whom you connect to.   

DeepOnion intends to provide multiple-level security by adopting a variety of industry-leading standards from the field of network security and cryptography. The TOR protocol is integrated at the transport layer to secure and ensure anonymity of the network traffic between nodes.   

DeepOnion has indicated the addition of zero-knowledge proofs in their roadmap that will obfuscate the origins of the ONION transactions to every user. The DeepSend technology that is yet to be implemented will hide further the traces of transaction to guarantee 100% anonymity. The DeepSend technology is based on multi-signatures and is completely trust-less.   

The final stage of anonymity and security is provided by the application layer through the adoption of services such as marketplaces, decentralized exchanges and other services operating in a decentralized, anonymous, secure and a cryptographically verified fashion. 

DeepOnion’s Innovation Technologies that guarantee privacy and anonymity 

DeepOnion seeks to introduce other blockchain technologies that will be implemented to improve anonymity and privacy beyond their current efforts. It was cloned with an anonymous coin called Supercoin that offers stealth transactions that are facilitated by the processes of coin mixing. The following sections explain the rationale behind the selection of DeepOnion’s blockchain implementations.   
 

TOR 

TOR is a circuit-based anonymous communication service with a low latency. The second generation of the TOR network will address the limitations of the original versions by adding congestion control, a perfect forward secrecy, integrity checking, directory servers and configurable exit policies. It will also incorporate a practical design for services with a hidden location through rendezvous points.   

The Onion Router network work requires no kernel modifications or special privileges as it works on the real world internet. It only requires little coordination or synchronization between nodes and provides a trade-off that is reasonable between anonymity, efficiency, and usability. Therefore, TOR offers a perfect platform to build an anonymous cryptocurrency.   

DeepOnion is currently upgrading to the 0.3 protocol at the time of writing to introduce anonymous features to our wallet that are most secure and offers protection to all users. All DeepOnion wallet connections are usually made over the TOR network which means that there is no point in which your public IP address can be exposed.   
 

DeepVault 

DeepVault is held within DeepOnion’s blockchain and acts as a store for immutable information. It allows DeepOnion members to store hashes of files or credentials of file validation within the blockchain. There are numerous benefits associated with DeepVault since users can verify the integrity of a file over time. This implies that the file will be corrupted or altered in an event where the hash of file changes.   

It is one of the most valuable tools that checks whether your essential documents have not been tampered with and that they are secure. An obvious use for this feature includes legal documents as it allows a person to verify that the content in the document has not been altered erroneously, maliciously, or as a result of file corruption. This can be thought of as an expansion of smart contracts where integrity and conditions are validated through cryptography.   

DeepVault is highly intuitive and has been integrated into the DeepOnion wallet. It is one of the features that offers a solution to the problem of a simple file validation.   

It provides some benefits when improving the file verification and hashing processes. These include; 

•    It generates the file’s hash using a GUI immersed within the DeepOnion wallet.   

•    The SHA-256 algorithm used by the process of hashing is the most trusted and secure 

•    The file’s hash is protected by DeepVault within an immutable blockchain.   

•    A user who prevents others from validating the file is usually deprived of the file verification feature.   

DeepVault is an essential tool that aids DeepOnion users to protect and safeguard themselves in the digital era. There are innumerable benefits that accompany the ability to verify the integrity of your files and there are many scenarios in which it can be applied.   

DeepSend 

DeepSend is a security feature that was purposely designed to obfuscate the traces of transactions within the blockchain. This is a solution to one of the problems that were identified earlier with Bitcoin. The TOR integration of DeepOnion secures and ensures anonymity of network traffic at the transport layer. Some of the technologies associated with DeepSend include; 

•    Zero-Knowledge technologies such as ZCash and ZCoin by Zerocash and Zerocoin.   

•    Ring signatures by CryptoNote such as Monero and Bytecoin.   

•    CoinJoin technologies with random mixers e.g. SuperCoin and Dash, or with centralized mixers e.g. master nodes.   

DeepSend is currently being developed to be an enhanced version of a Mixer/ CoinJoin technology based on multi-signature technologies that are trust-less. This will, in turn, provide cutting-edge privacy and anonymity.   

DeepProtocol Stealth addresses 

Stealth addresses are one of the methods in which DeepOnion members will be granted additional security. They make a powerful additional security for genuine users since no one is aware when the transaction took place and who are the involved parties. The funds pass through the blockchain when funds are transferred from one user to another.   

The unique address that is created means that there is no link between any other transaction address used and the stealth address. The DeepProtocol stealth address is one of a kind and guarantees 100% anonymity during transactions.   This addition further helps DeepOnion become a leader in anonymous cryptocurrency.

WooCommerce Plugin 

Soon, every DeepOnion member will be able to receive ONIONS as a method of payment in their online store. You won’t have to be worried about fraudulent customers, chargebacks or credit card scams. The plugin for WooCommerce comes with absolutely no extra fees and it allows you to be paid instantly. Several other payment plugins are also currently being made for Prestashop, Opencart, Shopify, Magento and more which should be done in the coming weeks. DeepOnion looks eager to take over the ecommerce territory by storm, including the darknet.
 

Mobile Wallet      

The Mobile Wallet will operate naturally over the TOR network and will offer functionality that is similar to the desktop experience. The TOR network has been designed to protect your identity while on the move. One of the essential features of the mobile wallet is to send and receive ONION payment method. You will also be able to view your transactions, access VoteCentral, and much more.

Currently, DeepOnion is in the initial stages working with an iOS developer to transform the availability of DeepOnion’s mobile wallet on the Apple devices. You can always check out the official forums of the DeepOnion community and newsletters to be fully updated about this development.   

The mobile wallet will be branded in accordance with DeepOnion’s website to enhance a homogeneous experience by the users in our community across all platforms. An essential element that features in the mobile wallet is the experience provided to all DeepOnion members. It will undergo extensive testing to ensure that the wallet operation feels natural to every person irrespective of your level of experience in cryptocurrencies.   
 

Conclusion 

Bear in mind that it’s your responsibility to safeguard your investments in cryptocurrency. DeepOnion plays a major role in ensuring safe and secure transactions. Never slack on security especially your private key as it the most valuable in regards to cryptocurrencies. DeepOnion strives to counter the competition from leading cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum through its innovative technologies such as DeepSend, DeepProtocol, and multiple eCommerce plugins. It is very important to keep your information private and maintain your risks to a minimum as much as possible. This helps to safeguard and protect your investment as you continue to grow with DeepOnion.