Necessary to use Ledger Nano for my Stellar account? Or secure without it?

Paycheck

I just made an account on Stellar using this link : https://www.stellar.org/account-viewer/#!/dashboard

And I copied the secret key that was generated into a Notepad document, and have been able to log into it, and transfer a small number of Lumens from my exchange account to it.

Below that on the page is the option to log in with my Ledger Nano S. I could make another account using the Nano, and transfer my coins to it, but would that be any more or less secure than just using the login address and my Secret Key?

If anything, I'm a bit worried about this stellar.org site being hacked or broken, because if it gets messed up, then it seems like I cannot log into my account and get my coins, Nano or not.

Where are my coins now? Are they on the blockchain and my secret key is the ONLY thing that allows me to get to them?

jamie

Short answer: it's a million times more secure with a Nano S.

Longer answer: Let's say you save your secret in notepad like you currently do. If you get a virus on your computer or whatever, there's a chance that your secret will no longer be a secret and you'll lose all your lumens. There's many other ways that this could get compromised though, such as a browser extension that decides to send all data you copy and paste to their servers for example. There are so many scenarios where you could end up losing everything.

With a Nano S, you don't depend on the Stellar.org site alone like you seem to think either. Even if the Stellar site stops working for whatever reason, you can still access your lumens elsewhere. I won't explain how the Nano S and other hardware wallets work because I'm sure there's better articles etc online explaining that. But seriously, if you have a decent amount of lumens or any other cryptocurrency, invest in a hardware wallet as soon as you can.

Paycheck

Thanks for the details, I tested it myself, logging into the accounts with and without the Ledger wallet. The Ledger one shows the majority of my coins, the other shows only the 20 sitting in that account.

Not as secure as I think it could be, I don't like the idea of having to log into the Stellar site to access my coins, Ledger or no Ledger, but I don't trust the exchanges to hold it for me.