Legapass is certified by the Conseil Supérieur du Notariat.

How to secure your Metamask?

Coraline Aeimerton
14/12/2022
Updated on: 03/08/2024

The use of a Metamask-type portfolio that allows, among other things, access to the decentralized finance is becoming more and more common. Like any wallet, it has a public key that can be communicated to receive assets and a private key also called seed phrase. The latter should be kept in a safe place (at home, at the Legapass for example 👋)

Faced with the many scams and other scams that abound in the world of the web3, it is important to be more vigilant than ever to secure your Metamask.

In this article, we suggest several settings and tools to avoid having your " hot wallet ". We take this opportunity to remind you to try as much as possible to keep the assets you want to keep on the long term on "cold wallet" such as Ledger, Satochip,...

Here we go 🚀

What is a Metamask?

What is Metamask?

A online cryptocurrency walletcommonly known as hot wallet in the crypto sphere.

And what's the point?

With your Metamask account you will be able to store and exchange cryptocurrencies.

Is Metamask reliable?

In terms of security, your Metamask portfolio includes a anti-phishingThis makes it better able to fend off phishing attempts. However, as any device that manages money, it remains the favorite target of hackers. The latest "fashionable" hack? Address poisoning. The attacker will generate an address that looks like appearance to yours since it starts and ends with the same characters. Then it will send you several transactions with tokens that have no value. The hacker will hope that one day you select the poisoned address to send funds believing it to be yours. And then it's drama 🤐

How does Metamask work?

Metamask is available on mobile application (iOS and Android) and on browser where it comes as an extension (compatible with browsers: Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Brave). It allows you tointeract with decentralized applications (DApps) based on the blockchain (blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) like Binance chain, Avalanche, Polygon, ...). To do so, you must systematically perform a signature that will allow you to connect your wallet to a DApps and validate transactions.

How do I install or reinstall Metamask?

To use it, nothing could be easier!

1 - Download the extension, it's free!

All you have to do is download the free extension : Download Metamask.

Then proceed to download the application which will then be installed directly on your browser. You will find it in your list of extensions.

Beware, false links are regularly put online as you can see here with the missing a and the .co instead of .io :

2 - Configure your account

Launch the application and set a password. Important: choose a password with at least 12 characters, letters, numbers, and a special character.

For example, ABR4CADABRANT! would take 6 MILLION years to be hacked.

That way you're safe.

3 - Retrieve your seed phrase

Let's move on to the generation of the famous seed phrase or recovery phrase click on the padlock to reveal the secret words of your seed phrase automatically generated. ATTENTION: you must write down this series of words somewhere.

Without it, you won't have access to your cryptos!

LEGAPASS is a super secure place to keep your seed phrase well protected from pirates!

How to protect your account?

What is a seed sentence?

In English seed means seed. The idea is to indicate that this recovery phrase is at the base of the key, therefore at the root. The term "seed" was born from this idea. A seed phrase also called mnemonic phrase is a series of words, between 12 and 24 to be precise, that allows access to your cryptocurrencies. It will be requested in the context of a recovery process from wallet.

Protecting your Metamask is above all protecting your seed sentence

In case of loss of your login passwordyou will need your seed phrase to restore your wallet and choose a new password. It is very important not to disclose it under any circumstances and to keep it carefully. To do this, everyone has their own method, from a small piece of paper hidden somewhere, to a metal plate or even an encrypted file. However, these methods are still quite traditional to secure your Metamask. You can also trust us and be sure that your seed phrase will be protected with a military level of security.

3 things to do to secure your Metamask

Delete sites connected to your Metamask

In the settings of your Metamask, there is a tab called "Connected sites". By clicking on it, you will see all the web3 apps that have access to your wallet. Delete the apps you no longer use for security. This will not require any gas charges.

Revoke smart contracts you no longer use

Definition A smart contract is an intelligent contract that is executed only if a number of conditions are met.

Example: I trade 1 Ethereum for x amount of another crypto asset. If the condition is filledthe smart contract is executed.

Is that clearer?

To revoke the smart contracts of your Metamask, go to " the blockchain explorer "then click on " More " then " token approvals ". Copy your public address and validate. You can now see all the contracts that can interact with your wallet. In the example below, we are on the website of the Ethereum network explorer:

Finally, click on Revoke for remove authorizations from smart contracts that you want to remove. You may need to connect your Metamask to the blockchain browser to make the transaction.

Sign then the transaction to be completed.

As a bonus, we put you the link to this nice tool that allows you to perform the operation more easily: Revoke

Connect your Metamask to a hard wallet

A hard wallet or cold wallet is a solution for offline storage totally unreachable from the internet. Link your Metamask wallet to a typical cold wallet Ledger will add a layer of Security not negligible to avoid hacking. To perform the operation, you must have a Ledger key. Then, go to the settings and click on "add devices.

Follow Ledger's very well explained tutorial on how to complete the operation.