Metamask Advisor Addresses Misinformation on Wallet’s Privacy and Security Measures
Metamask assures no policy change, emphasizes importance of decentralization, censorship resistance, and privacy in wallet space.
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Editing by Nathaniel Cajuday
Following the spread of misinformation regarding the privacy and security of the non-custodial wallet Metamask, Jacobc.eth, a Metamask advisor and former Lead of Operations, addressed concerns in a Twitter thread.
To prevent users from transferring to “less private wallets” that might compromise their assets, he explained the privacy services of the wallet, assuring that it is safer than ever.
“The misinformation about MetaMask and its privacy standards are driving people to less private wallets and public RPC services whose business model is surveillance. Let’s talk about it,” Jacob wrote in a tweet.
According to him, the controversy talks about how every public remote procedure call (RPC) endpoint, an URL that requests blockchain data, receives IP addresses because of how the web is structured. He noted that with blockchain development suit Infura, “the IP address is never associated with the wallet address. It is simply held to prevent DDoS attacks.”
Consequently, Jacob assured that there was no “policy change” and MetaMask and Infura didn’t “start collecting IP addresses.” He also affirmed that these entities even hired a new data privacy officer who wanted to make things extra clear in the privacy policy.
“Infura is in fact an infrastructure company. It does not (and has never) sold user data. It also doesn’t upload that data to advertising platforms or do other shady bs with it. It has now hardened its policies and practices to delete all of this data after 7 days,” he guaranteed.
Further, Jacob added that, unlike Infura, other RPC services retain a LOT of information about the users; where many of them “even have privacy policies that describe selling this data. “
He even cited Alchemy, which he regarded as “the most popular alternative RPC people were told to switch to during the hysteria.”
With these circumstances, Jacob stated that people were more encouraged to “switch to a diversity of wallets, even though MetaMask is RPC agnostic, and many of the wallets that people are being told to switch to are Alchemy products, compromising those user’s privacy!”
“We need decentralization, censorship resistance, and privacy for the wallet space. MetaMask’s work towards permissionless hyper-extensibility is what gives us the best shot at achieving these goals,” he stated.
According to him, as compared to most wallets’ hard-coded RPCs and network lists, Metamask allows its user to choose while preventing them from censoring–even if they wanted to, it doesn’t:
“MetaMask is launching Snaps, an extensibility solution that allows third-parties to build their own wallet features (like privacy protocols!)… The MetaMask team is also working hard to evaluate new privacy tech and bring it to the wallet client. There’s a lot of really incredible privacy innovations being developed in the ecosystem. @hoprnet‘s RPCh product has me most excited, personally.”
Jacob also expressed hope that the “community and ecosystem can develop a nuanced approach and promote real privacy solutions.”
“The last weeks of FTX hell have us all angry, but attacking the team’s building privacy and self-custody tech makes everything worse,” he concluded.
Last May, MetaMask forged a new strategic partnership with Asset Reality, an end-to-end solution for recovering, managing, and accessing seized crypto and complex assets, which represents an “industry-first approach” to improving digital asset recovery. (Read more: MetaMask Announces New Partnership to Help Filipino Scam Victims)
In July, Metamask revealed that the Philippines is in the top three for the most MetaMask users worldwide. Last year, it exclusively mentioned to BitPinas that 17% of its 21 million users back then, or 3.57 million users, were Filipinos. (Read more: Philippines Rank Third in Most Number of MetaMask Users in Q2 2022)
Last month, MetaMask introduced MetaMask Bridges, a bridge aggregator that allows users to find the “best routes” for moving their tokens from one chain to another. (Read more: Move Crypto Across Chains Using MetaMask Bridges)
This article is published on BitPinas: Metamask Advisor Addresses Misinformation on Wallet’s Privacy and Security Measures
Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.
