Four quick questions about how your wallet’s recovery phrase is stored, never the phrase itself. You get a ranked verdict of your two biggest threat classes, with concrete next steps.
Never asks for a phrase. Answers stay in your browser.
This tool will never ask for your seed phrase
Not one word of it, not “just to check”. No website, support agent, exchange, or “validator” needs your phrase. Enter it only into a wallet recovery flow you deliberately opened and verified. This page asks only how the phrase is stored:
There are no text fields on this page. Every answer is a checkbox or a button, so a phrase can’t be entered even by accident.
Everything runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere. Your answers aren’t saved unless you tick “Remember my answers”. Otherwise they’re gone when you close the tab.
Your risk verdict
Ranked from your answers. Your two biggest threat classes come first.
Remote theft
Someone who has never seen you copies your phrase through a screen. Stealer malware, phishing kits, and cloud-account takeovers are built to find exactly this. Synced photos, notes, and email are where they look first.
Re-secure the phrase first, then delete every synced copy: the photo (including “Recently Deleted”), the note, the email draft.
Make one offline copy on paper or metal and store it where you’d keep a passport.
If you want a working copy on your phone, use an encrypted vault on the device, not a synced note, so nothing readable ever leaves it.
Never type the phrase into a website, app pop-up, or “wallet validation” form. No legitimate service asks for it.
Physical loss & discovery
Here the copy itself is the target: fire, flood, a chaotic move, a break-in, or simply someone in your home finding a very interesting piece of paper.
Upgrade paper to a fire- and water-resistant metal backup.
Keep it unlabeled and boring (no “CRYPTO” on the envelope), and away from your desk and your wallet device.
For higher stakes, add a second copy in a second location (a trusted relative, a bank box).
Don’t carry the phrase when you travel. Remember that a phone with an unencrypted note is carrying it.
Single point of failure
Nothing needs to be stolen for the money to be gone. One lost object, one forgotten memory, one accident, and there is no path back. Loss, not theft, is how most crypto actually disappears.
Create a second, independent copy in a different medium and a different place.
Treat memory as a backup at best, never the only copy.
Write an inheritance path: one person you trust must be able to find it and know what it is.
Run a fire drill once: restore the wallet from your backup copy before you ever need to.
What each of your current methods risks
A photo or screenshot on my phone.A camera-roll photo syncs to the cloud, sits in backups, and is readable by anything with photo access. It’s the first thing stealer malware searches for.
A notes app or cloud note (iCloud, Google Keep…).A synced note is readable text on someone else’s servers. Whoever gets into the account, by phishing, SIM swap or breach, gets the wallet.
An email draft or message to myself.Email is searchable, readable text that lives forever, and email accounts are the most phished thing on the internet.
A password manager.Encrypted, which beats a note. A cloud manager still puts the phrase behind an online account and a master password, both active attack targets. A local-only manager (an offline file) is closer to a vault on your device. The follow-up below asks which you use.
Written on paper at home.Paper is immune to hackers, and defenseless against fire, water, a chaotic move, or curious hands.
Stamped or engraved in metal.Metal survives fire and flood. It’s still one physical object that can be found, taken, or lost with the house.
Memorized only — no written copy.Nothing to steal, and nothing to recover. Illness, injury, or plain time can erase the wallet with no path back.
Split into parts or shares (e.g. 2-of-3).Strong against any single event, if the scheme is set up correctly and someone besides you can actually rebuild it.
An encrypted vault app on your device.Encrypted on your device is the sane way to keep a working copy. Pair it with one offline copy for disaster recovery.
Saved on this device only. Nothing was sent anywhere.
How the scoring works
Three threat classes are scored 0–10 from your answers, entirely in your browser, using the fixed weights published in the page source (src/data/seed-storage-quiz.ts). No answer is ever sent.
Remote theft
“Remote theft” is a weakest-link score. It takes the HIGHEST exposure among the places a copy exists, because one leaky copy is enough. A cloud-synced photo scores 10. A screenshot with sync and backups turned off scores 4 (still on the phone, but no automatic cloud copy). An offline metal plate scores 0. Frequent border crossings add a point when a copy travels on the phone.
Physical loss & discovery
“Physical loss & discovery” also takes the worst single copy, then adds points for shared housing, frequent visitors, and travel. Those apply only if a physical copy or a copy on the phone exists at all.
Single point of failure
“Single point of failure” starts from your MOST resilient copy. It then gives credit for redundancy only across genuinely independent failure domains: a phone (device), a cloud account, physical paper/metal, memory, or split shares. Two copies in the SAME domain (a screenshot and a vault, both on the one phone) earn nothing. Spanning two domains subtracts two points, three or more subtract three. We don’t split “physical” by location, since the quiz never asks where each copy lives. Living alone adds a point, because no one can recover on your behalf. “Memorized only” scores the full 10.
Two follow-ups refine otherwise-ambiguous answers: whether the photo copy is actually synced/backed up, and whether a password manager is a cloud account or a local-only file. The stake tier never changes the scores. It only frames how urgently the same facts should be treated. Ties rank remote theft first, then physical, then single point of failure.
Free to use and link, for everyone who writes about wallet security.
<a href="https://sealby.app/en-au/tools/seed-phrase-storage-quiz">Where do you keep your seed phrase? A 60-second storage risk check (never asks for the phrase)</a>
The working copy belongs in a vault.
Keep the offline backup on metal, and the copy you actually use in Sealby. There it is encrypted on your device with keys in the Secure Enclave. No account to phish, deniable if it matters.