Support Team Tips: Why your wallet recovery phrase is so important

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A major asset to wallet security and ownership is the ability for users to back up their funds.

The process and utility behind making a backup has changed since our legacy wallet. It’s also a lot easier. To refresh your understanding of how our new wallet works under the hood, be sure to check out this post.

Your Wallet Recovery Phrase (or seed) is a random string of words that you write down and store somewhere safe. It acts as a saved copy or backup of your funds. You can find it in the Security Center, or by going to Settings -> Security. For guided assistance on how to set up and store your phrase, check out this tutorial in our Support Center.

When to use your recovery phrase

Life happens. Maybe you have a disaster of a day and forget your password, or you lose your mobile device with 2-Step Verification enabled. The recovery phrase is designed to be your backup plan, and it’s much quicker than waiting for a 2FA Reset Request.

If you do lose access to your wallet, visit the help options from the login page to use the phrase and regain access. The recovery phrase never changes, and when you use it it will recover all existing bitcoins as well as newly received funds in that particular wallet.

Please note that imported addresses are not backed up by the wallet recovery phrase. We strongly recommend you sweep funds from imported addresses.

For detailed wallet tutorials,* please visit our** Support Center. *

Originally published at https://blockchain-blog.ghost.io on April 20, 2016.

Support Team Tips: Why your wallet recovery phrase is so important was originally published in @blockchain on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.