Where are these people coming from with this horribly wrong information? Someone in another thread recommended cashing out BTC by direct bank transfer. No offense, but you all have a lot to learn before you start giving advice in Security. ladyjane, the only security threat is if your private key is compromised, the adversary could read the messages you sent to others. Of course, he could read the messages they sent and encrypted to you, even when you don't encrypt to yourself, and probably reconstruct the other half of the conversation anyway. I encrypt most messages to myself so I can remind myself of what I wrote, which I forget sometimes.