Re: Newbie DO'S and DONT'S?

Blockchain.info is cool though, because the site owner doesn't have access to the private keys of the users.

That is not entirely true.

The blockchain.info wallet is code that runs in the browsers, if it can work with your bitcoins after you've unlocked your wallet, and they provide the code, then it stands to reason that they can modify the code to take actions using your private key after you have unlocked it.

Or simply, they can change their javascript to be malicious. It is still a trust based service.

Or their server could be hacked and then give you malicious code and steal your password for decrypting the server side wallet file.

The important point is that online wallets are less secure than desktop ones, but at the same time not all online wallets are created equally.

Some, like Blockchain, publish their in-browser code as open source (on GitHub) and do not do any private key handling on their servers making them somewhat safer. Others store your private keys on their servers, making the service more PayPal-like than Bitcoin-like.

You could lose your Bitcoin in either scenario, but the former (Blockchain-style) service is the safer of the two.

That's true.
In summary, in terms of safety level, offline wallet (best) > hot wallets running on your machines > blockchain.info wallet > exchange wallets (worst)

It depends by the security knowledge of the user, a casual Joe with an obsolete Windows OS who installed some cracked programs/games could be the worst of all.