By now, you have certainly heard and read about the arrest of tech luminary Pavel Durov, Founder and CEO of the world’s possibly most important messaging app, Telegram.
While conspiracy theories – some valid, some simply outrage-baiting without substance – have run wild, some simple facts remain:
Keep a low profile—don’t flex
While our assumption is that your risk profile is vastly different from that of Pavel Durov, reported cases of kidnappings of high-profile targets (e.g., known holders of large quantities of cryptocurrency) have been increasing in recent years.
If you travel internationally, be sure to keep your public footprint low.
Pick your travel destinations wisely
Traveling to hostile or unsafe territories requires special precautions or complete abandonment of such plans.
Once again, while we assume that you do not have the high-profile role of Pavel Durov, even traveling with the wrong citizenship to the wrong country can pose an elevated risk, as countries might fabricate charges against holders of “hostile nation” passports to gain leverage in diplomatic negotiations.
Check public sources on the current security situation in your travel destination.
If you have a sufficiently high profile and the means, you can also access private, paid security reports tailored to your personal situation with more detailed recommendations.
Minimize exposure & harden security
Even if you do enter risky territories, ensure that you have a plan in case “things go south”.
This includes not having direct access to your cryptocurrency savings, which could make it easier for potential kidnappers to extort funds from you (a scenario that has occurred multiple times and will likely increase in the future).
Setting up a geo-distributed Multivendor Multisig is currently the best-known way to mitigate such risks by eliminating common single points of failure.
If you’re looking for personalized consulting on cyber and operational security, our team is ready to assist.
And if you’re seeking professional guidance on creating your own Multivendor Multisig setup, we have the expertise and tools for that as well.
For those of our readers who invest in cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin, our team will be releasing an updated outlook on TON within this week.
We wish Pavel the best—the world is certainly a better place because of him, his contributions, and the way he has enabled many of us to share information that would have long been censored on other centralized platforms.
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Further reading: Durov arrest – what does the future hold for TON?
