A slip of attention, and someone — a guest, a repair person, a passer-by — caught sight of your recovery phrase. Someone saw your recovery phrase: what should you do now? The key thing to understand is that the phrase is the key to your assets, so anyone who has it in full could reach them. That is what makes this worth taking seriously rather than brushing off. Here is how to assess the risk and respond sensibly.
First, assess how exposed it really is
Start by calmly judging, right now, three things: who saw it, how much of it they saw, and whether they could actually remember it. If a deeply trusted family member glanced at it briefly and paid no real attention, the risk is low. But if it was someone you do not know well, or they clearly studied it, or could have photographed or written it down, then treat it as exposed. When you are unsure, lean toward caution — once a full phrase is known to someone else, they could in principle restore your assets elsewhere.
Why changing the PIN is not enough
A natural first instinct is to change the PIN — but on its own, that does not solve this. Your assets are not protected by the device being locked; they are protected by only you knowing the phrase. So once the phrase itself is out, a new PIN, or even locking the device away, does not help: someone who knows the words does not need your device at all. That is exactly why an exposed phrase is a different kind of problem from a lost device, and why a PIN change alone leaves the real risk untouched.
The safe fix: move to a brand-new phrase
If you judge that it may genuinely be exposed, the clean fix is to set up a brand-new recovery phrase that only you know, and move your assets under it. In practice that means resetting the device, generating a fresh phrase during setup, and then moving your holdings to the accounts under the new phrase. From then on, the old words are useless to anyone, because your assets now live under a new key. Setting up the fresh phrase is covered in activation setup, and broader steps for when something has gone wrong are in what to do if your Ledger is lost.
When you might not need to act
There is a narrow case where you can hold off: if you are completely certain it was only a deeply trusted person, who glanced for a moment and would neither study nor remember it. In that case you may choose not to change it — but from that point on, store it far more carefully than before. The simple rule is this: the phrase's safety rests entirely on only you knowing it, so the moment that is genuinely in doubt, moving to a new phrase is the most complete answer. When in real doubt, act rather than hope.
