Bitcoin-Qt is getting require large and is taking up over 10% of the space on my little laptop. Looking for an alternative, I saw Electrum. I downloaded the app and I'm able to connect to a server, but I'm wondering: what would the security implications be of not connecting to your own server?
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3I like to know what are the security implication of hosting your own server :-) – barrymac Mar 06 '13 at 13:36
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Yeah, that's a good follow up question. You should ask it, and link it here! – Ramon Tayag Mar 07 '13 at 07:35
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1good idea, done: Vice Versa – barrymac Mar 07 '13 at 15:49
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@barrymac Nothing, unless there's a security issue in Electrum. – Nick ODell Mar 07 '13 at 18:07
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They'll be able to track your transactions/addresses and tie them to your IP address, although this is mitigated if you are using proxies (you can also go through Tor).
k kurokawa
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A dishonest server could lie to you about how many bitcoins you have.
Nick ODell
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Don't all the Electrum servers connect to each other, so you can connect to any of them? If so, wouldn't they all hold the same information about your account? – Ramon Tayag Mar 07 '13 at 07:34
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3All of the honest servers will tell you the same thing. But a dishonest server could lie. – Nick ODell Mar 07 '13 at 07:48
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1This is not correct, they can give you false low wallet balances, but not falsely high ones. – Claris May 04 '15 at 03:47
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2@bitcoin sure it could - by not telling you about a transaction that spends one of your outputs. – Nick ODell May 04 '15 at 04:05
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@NickODell are you sure about this? what you describe would be a client that fully trusts the server, however according to this talk from the author of Electrum (https://youtu.be/hjYCXOyDy7Y?t=718 <- exact moment) it says that Electrum is one level above the "server-trusting" wallets, that is, it's a SPV wallet; if this is still the case nowadays, I wonder what's the difference between this and a "server-trusting" wallet? – user1623521 Jan 17 '18 at 16:10
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@user1623521 He describes what he means in that video. To rephrase what he said, Electrum servers tell a client, "You got this transaction and this transaction and this transaction." Servers for server-trusting wallets say, "You have five bitcoins, trust me, I added it up correctly." In other words, 'server trusting wallets' can hide or exaggerate your Bitcoin holdings. – Nick ODell Jan 22 '18 at 03:32
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@NickODell you didn't seem to watch the video I sent; Electrum does some validation on the messages it gets from the servers to make sure they are not lying – user1623521 Jan 22 '18 at 07:06