I need some people to give advice on what they think of this idea from security perspective.
I am not a target, I don’t brag about bitcoin or tell people and certainly don’t say how much I own and live in safe neighborhood.
However I want to create a shamir and was thinking having 3 of 10.
I would keep 1 in home safe
1 in neighbor I trust well, family friend
1 my oldest son in different city
and 7 others with close friends
But I would only require 3 of the 10 to sign off transactions. People say write things down but I honestly don’t understand why these 9 other people why can’t I just orally give them on phone or in person the list, tell them to save on their google doc in the cloud, just save my name and I’ll tell them not to delete as I will need some time and when I do need I’ll tell them to tell me on the phone and not send me digitally.
It’s not practical that a hacker is going to ease drop on my phone calls and I could even be extra safe and call from different phones those people.
This seems a lot safer than writing this all done and giving them paper to save, it’s going to be much more prone to be lost.
Can you guys tell me what I’m missing here? Does this sound pretty darn secure or am I really missing something that’s a security flaw?
It could work, although saving the seed in a Google Doc isn’t optimal, since it’s online. However, IMO people forget and also don’t always do as you expect, so you have to be careful to who you trust.
A few pitfalls -
- You tell them to write down the words, then transfer them to Google Doc later. They forget the latter after you hang up.
- You tell them to write the words into a Google Doc right away, but they say they’re not certain they have / use Google Docs and must check first (but cannot right now because aunt Rebecca is visiting). Then forgets the whole thing.
- You tell them to write it down on paper and store it in a safe place for you. They write it down but loses the paper after a while - or forget where they put it.
- Phonetic trouble over the phone. You say one word is “sit” and your friend writes down “fit”.
- 5 years later you call them and ask if they could find the words in their Google Doc. They forget where they put it (have many Google Docs). They even forgot talking about this with you 5 years ago.
- Your friend moved to New Zealand when he retired 4 years ago and you didn’t know. Now you can’t find him or even have his phone number.
and so on …
IMO only trust yourself and put the different parts of the Shamir Backup on safe locations yourself (not save it digitally on a computer or online).
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good advice, thanks, it’s not good to put in 1 location, any recommendations what locations i can put where not relying on others? where i live there are no safe dep boxes at banks. i work from home, so this is my problem
Well, the locations could be anywhere you have access. For example:
1 at home in a fireproof safe
1 in you garage
1 in your log cabin in the mountains
1 in your boathouse by the sea
… and so on.
The important thing is that they’re relatively safe and not all are gone in case of fire or theft/burglary.
Also consider stamping the words in metal instead of writing them down on paper, and put the stamped metal card in a fireproof envelope before putting the envelope in a fireproof safe. You may also want to use a metal anvil under the metal seed card so it’s not bent when you use the hammer.
About the fireproof envelopes - because I’m slightly paranoid, I actually use one per backup seed of all my wallets, then I put all these envelopes into a larger fireproof envelope before I put that into a fireproof safe. Cannot be safe enough. 
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