Newbie Task 3; Navigating the Keys and Security on Hive

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Hi everyone, it’s my the week of the newbie initiative task and I will be engaging you all with the process of how to protect our account and what we need to know about keys and security on Hive.

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On my first day on hive, I was given some vital keys to activation of my account and I was instructed not to share it with anyone. With my knowledge about crypto wallets, I believe these keys to be the protector of my account, and if when shared with anyone or gets leaked to anyone, then people can easily have access to my account.

The general question is, “If I have a problem with my account will these keys always protect me” or “If my account gets sanctioned will it still protect. The answer is yes and no, Because after we have our keys which include the active key, memo key, private key, and owner key we must also complete our registration on recovery’s account, in case we get locked out. The recovery account stands as a trustee account for us. Below is the process of how to update our recovery account and put our trustee account.

We must First go to our profile and click on the three dots beside settings, under our profile picture.

After we have clicked the three dots we must click on keys and permission.

Then we will see the recovery account. We then click the recovery account.

Then we can now click on the recovery account.

Here we can now add the recovery account username and our private key to verify our changes.
If we read the instructions very well they thoroughly explained the importance of a recovery account and the reason we must put a trustee account because they can have access to our account so we need to be careful of whom we use for our trustee account.

Functions of the Keys

There are five keys in the hive and each key has its specific functions

Active Key
Owner key
Master key
Memo key
Posting key

Active Key; The active key is used to make transfers and exchange tokens. I use the active key to confirm my transaction when I want to send or swap hive, hbd, or tokens.
Owner Key; This is mostly used when we feel our account privacy is no longer safe. The owner key helps to change other keys in cases of forgetting of key or after recovery account.
Posting Key; This is used to log in and also to vote or comment. Posting keys have limited permission. We can’t use the posting key to transfer money only to log in, vote, comment, or engage in other social activities.
Memo Key; Memo Keys are used to encrypt and decrypt private messages that are sent through the blockchain and also transfers.
Master Key; This is the most important key of all of them. It is used in an emergency case and can be used to access all of them.

Per adventure your active key gets exposed to the general public what are the measures you will take to safeguard your assets and account going forward

Immediately I notice my key gets exposed to the general public I will change all my keys with my owner key as fast as I can, and in cases of emergency I will contact and move all my earnings to my trustee account. Then I move on by creating a new active key so the older one won’t be of use again.