Replying to Avatar Ava

People act precious about sharing email addresses, as if we don't already have battle-tested solutions like disposable emails/anonymous email aliases.

Practice good OPSEC. Using easily generated, disposable emails and long, unique passwords—through tools like SimpleLogin and a password manager like ProtonPass or BitWarden—is far more secure than carelessly plugging your one and only NSEC into random alpha/beta/stable apps that haven't passed a single independent security audit.

Using event signers like Amber or extensions like nos2x is better, as it reduces your dependency on 3rd party app security, but all the key/event signers we have have never been subjected to or passed an independent security audit.

Just because something's built on or compatible with Nostr doesn't make it secure, and just because someone is an outstanding developer does not make them a security professional. 99% of app developers are unqualified to audit their own apps—that's why proper security audits cost ~$15K+ and require a team of dedicated specialists.

The reality is: if you your nsec gets doxxed, everything attached to it is doxxed—period. There's no fallback, no way to keep your account and just change compromised login info. This is even more critical for businesses on Nostr and those outsourcing social media management—incompetent/disgruntled ex-employees are a very real threat.

Myself and many others have said time and time again: we need a parent/child key system—with the ability to generate, pause, and deactivate child keys—to match the basic privacy and security that we already have with disposable emails and lengthy unique passwords. The clock is ticking.

#IKITAO #OPSEC #Privacy #Tech

Password managers are weird. They're supposed to be more secure for you but become the single point of failure.

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If you distrust open-source, independent security-audited password managers, you can still use them to generate long, unique, high-entropy passwords. The risk of using low-entropy passwords that you can remember is a far greater risk for most people.

A 10-character password with mixed characters provides only about 26 bits of entropy, which can be cracked in seconds.

In contrast, even just a 12-character password with proper character mixing can achieve 78 bits of entropy, requiring decades to crack even with specialized hardware.

It's not just reused low-entropy passwords being sold on the dark web with the rest of your information that is a threat. With quantum computing just around the corner, the necessity for unique, high-entropy passwords is critical for information security.

That might be better. Storing all the passwords in the cloud is what's ringing alarms.