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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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A dishonest server could lie to you about how many bitcoins you have.
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 – 2013-03-07T07:34:54.417
3All of the honest servers will tell you the same thing. But a dishonest server could lie. – Nick ODell – 2013-03-07T07:48:03.980
1This is not correct, they can give you false low wallet balances, but not falsely high ones. – Anonymous – 2015-05-04T03:47:40.693
2@bitcoin sure it could - by not telling you about a transaction that spends one of your outputs. – Nick ODell – 2015-05-04T04:05:02.153
@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 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 – 2018-01-22T03:32:42.930
@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 – 2018-01-22T07:06:27.497
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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).
3I like to know what are the security implication of hosting your own server :-) – barrymac – 2013-03-06T13:36:16.847
Yeah, that's a good follow up question. You should ask it, and link it here! – Ramon Tayag – 2013-03-07T07:35:17.553
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good idea, done: Vice Versa
– barrymac – 2013-03-07T15:49:18.350@barrymac Nothing, unless there's a security issue in Electrum. – Nick ODell – 2013-03-07T18:07:57.563