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First aid · Fatal mistakes
What NEVER to do when you lose access to your wallet
Almost every hopeless case that reaches me wasn’t hopeless at the start. It broke along the way, in the first few hours, doing one of these eleven things with the best intentions in the world.
What destroys the material
- Uninstalling the wallet app to «reinstall it clean». That deletes the encrypted file holding your phrase.
- Running a cleanup or system-optimisation tool. They delete exactly the extension and app data.
- Creating a new browser profile and deleting the old one.
- Formatting or factory-resetting the computer or phone.
- Resetting a hardware device without the phrase written down and verified in front of you.
- Burning through PIN attempts guessing at random on a hardware wallet.
- Rewriting the phrase sheet «neatly», correcting by eye what can’t be read.
Number seven looks harmless and isn’t. An illegible word is information: it marks exactly where the doubt is. A word «corrected» by eye may be another valid but wrong word, and then you no longer even know where the problem was.
What leaves you with no money
- Typing the phrase into a website, with any excuse: validating it, syncing, checking the balance, recovering a word.
- Giving it to someone who messaged you privately, even if they claim to be official support and know your name.
- Sharing your screen with a stranger while opening the wallet.
- Paying in advance to someone promising to recover it.
Those four have something in common: they arrive right after you post your problem somewhere. That isn’t coincidence: there are programs watching those posts. If you are going to ask for help on a forum, ask in public and don’t accept private messages.
And two more, less obvious
- Continuing to use the computer if you deleted something by mistake and hope to recover it from the disk. Every minute of use reduces the chances.
- Giving up the search too early. More cases are solved by finding a piece of paper or an old copy than by any technical work. Before giving up, spend a whole afternoon searching.
The positive list, in order, is in I just lost access: the first 5 steps.