Does your hardware wallet keep your crypto safe from you?

A hardware wallet keeps you safe from compromised computer systems. if you store your crypto-secrets on a compromised system, whoever has compromised the system can steal your stuff, so hardware wallets are separate devices (with separate operating systems) with limited connectivity and are (in theory) difficult to compromise.

I've seen a SECOND way that hardware wallets keep people safe, but i don't like it, let me explain.

Limiting the types of transactions a wallet can perform, usually because the 'limited connectivity' mentioned above prevents it, or perhaps because the wallet itself prides itself on being 'too dumb to be dangerous'. how many times have we heard variations on this type of story (paraphrased): "no sorry sir you cant move your funds from your account, we currently believe you are DUMB and too STUPID too know you are being scammed, so we are preventing you from accessing YOUR money" (especially when someone plays the fool when answering 'why are you removing your funds today')....

So, the second way a hardware wallet keeps your stuff safe is by keeping it safe from YOU. being unable to execute a contract call or sign a token approval request means the users hands are tied from making mistakes, BUT THIS IS NOT THE POINT OF HARDWARE WALLETS!

a hardware wallet lets you store a secret, then for each blockchain, that secret is used to create wallets/accounts/private keys for the blockchain, but there exists no transaction you can sign that would allow an attacker to reach outside of an 'account' on a blockchain to get at your other hardware-wallet-hosted accounts, and each hardware wallet lets you create unlimited accounts

So anytime you need to sign a dodgy transaction, there is NO REASON not to sign it from your hardware wallet, you just need make sure it's from a fresh account.

'Cold storage' is certainly about limiting access to your funds, but you can have a 'hot' wallet stored on a hardware wallet, and what makes it 'hot' is all the smart contracts and dex's you use with that account, but you shouldn't ALSO need the added risk of storing your secret in software just because you need a hot wallet.

There certainly is risk in having a smart contract nick all your stuff (in an account), but then nobody is forcing you sign those sorts of transactions.

And for those that may say 'it's a larger attack surface'... i disagree, if we think about a hardware wallet communication a bit like a snail-mail letterbox-slot in the front door of a house, 'dumb' hardware wallets can have the same letters posted through the mailbox, its just the residents in the home don't understand whats in them, and don't feel comfortable signing and posting the result back, but just because you understand more of whats getting posted, doesn't suddenly mean an attacker has a larger hole in the front door to climb through.

TLDR; with the current focus on wallets being 'arrogantly dumb', people have forgotten that once you have a sufficiently capable hardware wallet, you should have no reason (besides being lazy, even i do it) to have a software wallet store your crypto-secret. simple as that.

EDIT: and don't get me started on hardware wallets that need you to enter the seed via a computer, that breaks the only reason you need a hardware wallet, to keep your seed off computers while still being required by computers.