People have been asking (rightly so) why they should trust us with their IOTAs? After all we are not members of the IOTA Foundation.
“Perhaps the IOTA Watch is unsafe, perhaps it is a scam and it does not generate truly random seed words. Such a scam would be fairly easy to implement and hide in the watch because the watches firmware is stored in encrypted flash memory. Or it could be programmed to randomly hijack hi value IOTA sends in the future sending them to a Silicon Droid collecting address etc.”
Anyone is correct to be cautious, in fact be paranoid, this is crypto and it is relatively unregulated. However it is still regulated to some degree and IOTA is traceable. IOTA has already been targeted by a seed scammer who now stands trial after being caught.
If we were to attempt a theft of IOTAs from one or more of our IOTA Watches then we would have to do it without being caught. It would be impossible to steal any IOTAs without the user noticing something was wrong. We are an incorporated Canadian business and this website has organizational level SSL certification. The Canadian police would immediately find a SiliconDroid Inc. shareholder or our passports would be flagged and Interpol would be notified.
We choose (Like Ledger) to keep the firmware closed source and encrypted, we do this to prevent second hand IOTA watches being “backdoored” and sold on. Or even new backdoored IOTA watches appearing as the blank watch hardware can be purchased from China. Such a backdooring event would damage our reputation and brand.
Having said all of this, remain cautious; Treat the IOTA watch as you would a spending cash wallet, not a bank vault, after some years our reputation and trust will increase. The most secure method to store larger crypto amounts is on distributed paper wallets; split your 24 word list into 2 x 12 word lists and keep each list half at a different trusted location.
Even if you choose to be super cautious, and not use the wallet function, the IOTA Watch can still be useful for you:
- Monitor one or more IOTA addresses real time, the watch gives you alerts when the sum IOTA value changes.
- Monitor any IOTA node real time, the watch gives you alerts if the node becomes unhealthy.
- Monitor IOTA price and charts real time, the watch gives alerts on price and rank changes.
Be careful… “It’s a jungle out there!”