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Setup social recovery

note

The process of generating your social recovery shares is using an algorithm called Shamir's Secret Sharing. This algorithm allows you to combine any of the shares to get back to your original secret while giving contacts with fewer than the required number of shares NO information about your original secret. This is, in contrast, to simply cutting your original secret into multiple pieces and giving it to your contacts. If you do that, you reveal a part of your secret to each one, leaving you vulnerable to brute force attacks. This is not the case if you use our social recovery generation.

How to set up Social Recovery in AirGap Vault​

If you want to set up social recovery functionality for your secrets, follow these steps:

  • Select the setting of the secret you want to set up socail recovery phrase for.
  • Select “Social Recovery”.

On the next page you get a set of numbers.

  1. The number of secret shares: This number determines the amount of social contact you wish to maintain.
  2. The number of shares needed for recovery: This number determines the number of secret shares needed to successfully recover your secret.

For this example, we select three for the number of secret shares and two for the number of shares needed for recovery.

  • Click the “start” button and back up the first social recovery phrase.
  • Click the “next” button and confirm the first social recovery phrase.
  • Click the “next” or “continue” button and backup the second social recovery phrase.
  • Click the “next” button and confirm the second social recovery phrase.
  • Click the “next” or “continue” button and backup the third-social recovery phrase.
  • Click the “next” button and confirm the third social recovery phrase.
  • Click “Finish”.
  • Make sure you validate that you wrote everything down correctly by importing your newly created social recovery.
  • Now put each of the shares into a sealed envelope and securely distribute them among your trusted contacts

How to recover your secret with social recovery in AirGap Vault​

  • To recover your account from social recovery shares, open the AirGap vault and select the “social recovery” import method.
  • Select the number of shares that are required for recovery and input the social recovery phrases from the initial setup. In our case, it was two. Click the “Recover” button.
  • Success, you've recovered your account using social recovery.