Topic: A treatise on privacy (Read 621 times)

This  is the same everywhere and people roam around casually once looking at the matter from the above just to put some of their involvement without even going into deep and taking the matter seriously.Not only with privacy or keeping your funds safety we find this attitude and mindset of people in most of the cases which lead to problems for them.Thinking that it will never happen with me is not a way to approach these issues as we all have the same chance of hitting with the same problems.

With coinbase privacy issues and Binance hacks people still lack the awareness and have their funds on these exchange who are easily prone to hacks as they already are in possession of your keys so what safety do you expect next? Many customers have shared their negatives reviews and how they lost the funds but your statement that "i am safe" is the reason behind they becoming the next soft targets.

Government will never allow citizens to slip out of their control and they will take every step to restrict them and have them restricted and the best way is to put restrictions on these exchange like the recent Coinbase by the Canada government.If you withdraw $1000 CAD or transfer it you will have to disclose the recipient details above the normal one which puts barrier to privacy and end up disclosing your personal information to them so they can put limits to you whenever they want so what's the benefit of holding funds over these exchanges?

Slowly the more government will regulate bitcoin but will also take steps to track you down so don't think your government is so crypto friendly attitude and you are safe over the counter and take all the security steps you can if you want privacy and true decentralised control over your funds.

One of the problems with this is that people hold the same mindset as they hold when it comes to centralized exchanges: "Well, it would never happen to me".

With centralized exchanges, despite literally thousands of warnings from users who have had their money go missing, had their coins confiscated, or had their accounts locked or terminated, people continue to leave large amounts of money on these exchanges, thinking "Well, I've never had any problems so I'll be fine to continue doing this". When their account is locked, they are obviously too late to do anything about it.

When it comes to governments censoring certain citizens or certain viewpoints, many people think either "Well, it would never happen in my country" or "Well, it would never happen to me". Here's the thing though. It almost certainly already is happening in your country, but it's just people you don't agree with being censored so you don't notice or care. Are you certain that your government will always treat your fairly? What about all future governments? You really can't imagine any circumstance in which your government might not like something you have to say? As we've seen throughout history, by the time they've silenced all the outspoken critics and start coming for the average citizens, then it is far too late to do anything.

I often mentally draw a parallel between this forum and bitcoin itself. There are a minority of users on this forum who express opinions which are provably wrong and/or abhorrent. Despite this, I have never and would never try to have their posts deleted or ban them from posting here just because of the nature of their opinions. There are a minority of users of bitcoin who use bitcoin for acts I would deem immoral. I have never and would never try to have them excluded from using bitcoin. Bitcoin is either censorship resistant, or it isn't. You cannot pick and choose who it is censorship resistant for.

In light of recent events, I stumbled across this topic.

One thing that I'd like to add, which wasn't brought up here yet, is the following point: who defines what is illegal?
Take for instance the current politics in Russia, where you aren't allowed to call a war, a war, or where holding up an empty paper sheet gets you arrested. Those things are illegal there, so therefore we shouldn't incentivize the use of free (freedom) money to allow protestors to receive donations and fight for information freedom, peace and democracy?

Since drugs were brought up: in some countries they're legal, in others they're not. Meaning the exact same activity (owning or selling them) may be illegal in one country and legal in another.

What I'm trying to say is: at first thought, it seems trivial that 'illegal things bad', 'legal things good', especially if you live in a country with semi-alright laws; but if you really think about, the definitions of legal and illegal activities are often very subjective and arbitrary. Lots of things we do on a daily basis (like expressing our thoughts freely) are actually illegal in some countries and you'd be outraged if I told you not to donate to people who fight for peace and freedom, because in their legislation it's not legal. There are lots of things all over the world that in their geographic and temporary location are illegal, but we all here would still consider 'good'.

Maybe you'd like not to see Bitcoin used for 'immoral' (instead of 'illegal') activities; which I would agree with, as opposed to referring to some random country's law. Besides the fact that morality is again a super subjective philosophical topic, it's physically impossible to create free, independent money and at the same time impose rules on its usage.

In my mind, by definition, the best money is the one that can be used anywhere, by anyone and for anything.
My final point (while already being mentioned) is that criminality has always existed and criminals always find a way to transact money. You could even argue that by using cryptocurrency, the criminals' lives are actually safer than if they met in person to exchange cash, as we can imagine how that often ends, if two armed criminals meet with a large bag of money.

But it's the law enforcement, of course they aren't criminals and bad people.. right?

Absolutely pathetic, although predictable. Privacy isn't bad. It never was. For a government thirsty for power and surveillance though, it's awful.

I will only keep repeating this as long as I live: governments need ways to obfuscate traces of money. They'll use it and they'll need it - as long as this statement is valid, Bitcoin and/or Monero will NOT fail. Any attempt to make Bitcoin more anonymous will be met 100% with an oppression from the governments. But we have to get past that. We have to learn to stop being afraid of what the authorities tell us especially when we know the only reason they're trying to stop us is that they are afraid of losing control over us instead of gaining more of it.

Lol.
This is EPIC

Report Claims the FBI Uses Bitcoin Mixers During BTC Forfeiture Processing

The article goes on with the Government  rule:


Yes, we know that...

Privacy is good thing, although Bitcoin don’t give us that, like they say, bitcoin is just pseudonymous. Yes, there are some of us that are good people, and what we need is just some privacy and not have anyone looking into our business, but unfortunately there are evil people who are looking for ways to use it for evil. This is why you will see some people here who don’t support the idea of being anonymous/having privacy. I am not really going to blame, we want privacy, yes that’s true, but we wouldn’t like for those who commit evil to go scout free. Unless there will be other ways to solve these problems which I don’t know.


I value privacy just because of ensuring my freedom rather than assuming like I got something to hide so I need privacy. When people find the actual reason why they need privacy over a wrong assumption about seeking privacy, then I guess they will get clear idea about bitcoin adoption as well.

But let's be real, the fact that bitcoin gives the possibility of anonymity is a net positive. You may not like some of the implications of it, but I personally prefer to have my savings stored far from my govt's reach. Simple as that, just think how much money is taken from you in taxes at any given month and is just normal to you, well, it's not okay. And privacy is a good way to combat it. Yes,  I know taxes do have good uses, but see the current US political stage and you can quickly realize how I don't want my hard earned money just mindlessly spent against my countries' own interests. But maybe that's just me.

I do agree, people overestimate the power of CCTV cameras and the coverage of facial recognition programs (even if the reality might be more “harsh” than thought), but what is really used for scanning our habits is the enormous amount of traces we leave behind via our credit cards. With those is easy to understand where we are, when we are there, what we like, what we need...
This is the ultimate privacy breaking tool.
So we know the antidote: cash. Use cash. Or to be traced. Did you notice protesters in HK buying their underground tickets on their way to protests with cash? Do you think they weren’t underground subscribers? No, they wanted to use cash not to be traced back, as simple as that.
 Also Google and Alexa (whose microphone is physicsllly detepached from the device when disabled), are somehow greatly overvalued as privacy menaced.

But the point is we must be as vigilant with digital privacy as we are with physical one: Bitcoin is not as private as initially fought, so we have to take countermeasures.

 

As 20kevin20 points out, probably far more likely is your phone, tablet, smart watch, fitness trackers, or some other device tracking your location (which they are all doing all the time) than a CCTV camera, especially since the later can be beaten by a scarf or (especially in the current climate) a face mask.

Completely agree. If you want to go full privacy, you can buy small adhesive physical shutters to put over the cameras in your devices, and you can physically remove the microphones so the only way for the phone to record sound is by you manually plugging in a headset or headphones with a built in microphone.

Still, the fact remains that all I have to do is simply leave these devices behind and any cash transaction I make can be anonymous. It is much harder to be truly anonymous while using bitcoin.

Even if some of us, accepts it or not in my opinion we may need to sacrifice some of our privacy in order to be accepted and mass adopted by institution, governments and average people.
And be prepared as it grows it gets more regulated like our current monetary system. The only difference is they cannot manipulate or control our money and the price because its versatile and scalable.

As long as we are still using centralized exchanges, of course we don't have privacy anymore, even if we track Bitcoin transactions
only know the address of Bitcoin and the amount. Once we use the centralization of exchanges or online wallets it will certainly be
connected with our personal data. But for me it doesn't matter that Bitcoin can't be completely anonymous, as long as I don't use
Bitcoin for illegal activities, I think it will be safe. Besides, I use Bitcoin not to get privacy, but I'm already tired with  transactions
using fiat. Which is always arranged by a third party.

At this point, I believe it's easier than ever and more realistic to monitor someone through phones instead of CCTVs. I highly doubt someone is keeping a track of who uses cash at some places through cameras - it's much easier and makes more sense to monitor someone through a device they carry around 24/7 with them.

And then, how will the cameras know anything besides (possibly) the products you've bought and the fact that you paid in cash? >99% of the CCTVs do not have a quality high enough to properly see and count how much money you're spending on what.

I'd be way more afraid of an Alexa or a Google Assistant than I'd be of a surveillance camera tbh, and let's not forget the fact that a lot of people use NFC cards to pay at shops for comfort - so the ledger is already there: the bank account. With the smartphone it's as easy as the phone recognizing a customer-cashier interaction and storing the data in a server.

If I had to guess, they're talking about surveillance like CCTV cameras.  Because you have to physically go somewhere to spend cash, your movements could be monitored.  I guess it's a valid point in some places, where CCTV can be quite pervasive.  But I think people overestimate the potential sometimes.  Too many shows on TV where they always catch the bad guy by enhancing some blurry footage from a camera in a way that wouldn't actually be possible in the real world, heh.

Sure, but how did people find out about those things in the first place? Word of mouth from current users and advertising. Smartphone producers spend billions of dollars each every year advertising their product. Bitcoin has none of that. Social media spread largely through word of mouth, with people wanting to "add" their friends to their profiles. If we, the current bitcoin users, don't talk about bitcoin to other people and try to spread adoption, then bitcoin doesn't have any of that either. How is adoption supposed to grow in that case?

I do agree with that, which is kind of the point I am making. We will never have some massive advertising campaign on billboards and TV ads around the world saying "Bitcoin has arrived!", so instead we need slow and steady growth by word of mouth.

Don't follow you at all here. How can the government easily identify when and where I pay for something in cash? Once I have withdrawn the cash from the bank, the paper trail ends. How does the government know if I give it to my friend to pay for some pizza or if I give it to a drug dealer in the next neighborhood?

I think it already happened.
Just looks slower now because we are rushing the adoption.

Imagine how much members only in this forum had.
Now, we are millions I think if you use the amount in userid's.
Although some have a different reason coming in, there is still always a chance they will bump into a thread like this which talks about bitcoin.
No one advertised bitcoin, that is the truth. Because no one will pay you doin it.
It came from the mouths of those who believe in it. Scattered slowly but can now be a discussion in the streets.

I cannot even count anymore how many people I bumped into personally and ended up talking about bitcoin.
Just yesterday someone asked me about bitcoin again.
My new neighbor.

Ofcourse.
It will be hard to use Bitcoin the way it supposed to be used without the privacy feature. All its important features were included in the beginning for good reasons. If you begin to remove the features little by little, you will leave the network vulnerable and weak.  
"if the purpose of something is unknown (or deliberately ignored) abuse is inevitable."

It will also he good to use its important features like privacy in ways that will be hard to abuse or use for wrong reasons

I think that privacy matters, but it's really difficult to maintain it. Just today I wanted to upload a video on Youtube anonymously because it has some content the government of one country might hate, but without a phone it's now impossible to make a Youtube channel (so I spent hours working on the issue of getting an anonymous phone number). And when it comes to Bitcoin, it's hard to spend it directly and not be identified. If it's an online shop, then you order delivery on a certain address and most likely have to also provide your name and phone number. If it's not an online store, it's even harder to find one in one's neighborhood to pay with BTC. And if one sell BTC for fiat, like me, it most likely contains identification in the form of KYC or a name associated with a debit card or something. Or, if one's meeting someone personally, this person knows how you look like and where you can meet (so you probably live in the same town if not district).

You are partially right, but you can make 100 transactions with cash, peer-to-peer, and nobody would have any ledger where all of them are recorded. That's the main difference - Bitcoin txs are recorded, validated and represent an undeniable proof that your address indeed has had transactions with another specific address.

If you go to an exchange (or any other service), use crypto to pay/exchange and you complete KYC or even some basic info forms, they'd very easily link the addresses to your name and any other info you (un)willingly gave away. That includes your IP, your e-mail address, your phone number etc. It's very easy to link these informations together and find a very accurate match for them.

And even if you enter an exchange using Tor without your real e-mail, name and phone number, chances are you are not using coin control in your BTC wallet so at one point the said account is easily linked to your other addresses through which you've leaked enough info to be identified.

I have to disagree with that, cash isn't as anonymous as bitcoin. Cash is person to person transaction which the government can easily identify where all your money goes just for asking and reviewing all your movements, unlike in bitcoin? You could create thousands of wallet in several clicks, transact seamlessly without anyone knowing that you are already doing it. Cash will be only anonymous when you transact with your eyes closed, you forgot that government has all the power.

My question is how could they do that? And also, living in the blockchain does not mean that you need to loosen your guard right?

Indeed, and I suspect Satoshi has a vision that bitcoin is going to places where we don't see it now.

I'm of a similar mindset lately.  Take it slow and steady.  For the most part, just allow people to get there on their own.  We don't need a sales pitch, just patience.  It's all about the timing.  When someone else is vocal about their dissatisfaction with traditional banking, that's where you plant the seed.  Nothing too pushy.  Just wait for that one opportune moment to casually mention to someone how much you've been enjoying the benefits of privacy and financial freedom afforded to you by Bitcoin at a time when it's going to resonate with them the most.  If they ask questions, take it from there.  If they don't respond, wait for the next moment.  

Once more people are on board, then the retailers will naturally follow.  I don't see the point in pestering companies to adopt Bitcoin at a time where they won't see a tremendous deal of traffic.  That could potentially cause more harm than good, as they may write the idea off permanently if they invest precious time in going through the learning curve and setting up payment infrastructure that people don't sufficiently use.  It has to be a grassroots thing and grow organically.  

Besides, I suspect the traditional banking system is going to give us plenty of those "opportune moments" over the course of time.  It's clearly not going to reform itself into anything remotely respectable anytime soon.  Perhaps it might yet find ways to get worse, somehow.  

And, for the topic at hand, many of the current participants of Bitcoin need to understand privacy better in order for them to be capable of correctly explaining the benefits when that moment comes.  If they are just talking about speculating and not discussing the real benefits, that's not going to help adoption either.  We need to educate the traders before we set to work on the wider public.

As a security and privacy enthusiast, I much appreciated your thread. Glad to know of it and welcome you to Good topics on security and privacy

As much as the fact that bitcoin is to an extent a private public network that is void of identity disclosure, i still think it is not private as the transactions can be disclosed but not to a particular name or identity but the wallet address or the transaction hash actually reveals the executed transactions in that particular wallet.

Adoption isn't going to be an individual thing nor even to say intentionally and collectively about it. Adoption isn't announced but it will creep into the system of all without announcement. It's about use, not just satisfaction. I believe that bitcoin will get to that era of everyone searching to have it .

None taken.

When a thing is truly groundbreaking, people quickly adopt it on their own - in the last decade no one asked people to adopt smartphones and social media, everyone did it because they clearly saw the benefits. It didn't happen with Bitcoin, because it has some big downsides, and the benefits aren't clear to average people. Therefore, evangelism can only marginally improve adoption, just like the actual evangelic christians can't convert the rest of the world, no matter how hard they go from door to door.

I even experienced some regression, as Bitcoin services that I used got closed down and no suitable alternative emerged.

Going to be improved very soon, "teleportation" of bitcoins via CoinSwap protocol (first proposed by Greg Maxwell back in 2013) is in the hands  of Chris Belcher who promises  it's going to be very hard ( if not impossible?) for even   specialized companies to extract from blockchain the privacy related data  when CoinSwap implemented.(https://www.coindesk.com/coinswap-and-the-ongoing-effort-to-make-bitcoin-privacy-invisible)

There are a continues fight against privacy from all governments, even against their own Fiat cash. People are absolutely obsessed with Bitcoin's anonymity or should I rather say pseudo anonymity, but they forget that cash is even more anonymous than Bitcoin.  

Pseudo anonymity is absolutely critical for Bitcoin, because it hides your financial information from criminals. All transactions is transparent on the Blockchain, so it puts us in danger, when those transactions can be traced back to our savings and our wealth.

Satoshi designed Bitcoin to offer pseudo anonymity to protect people's wealth. It is their own decision if they want to void that by using third party regulated services.  

I also don't understand the point.
Yes, at the very begininig Bitcoin had negative reputation because of use on dark web but I thought we got that over. Monero is number one criminal currency that is true.
But I don't think that any cryptocurrency shouldn't have negative reputation because of illegal use because this is not worse compared to fiat currencies. It sedme that everyone forgets money laundering and other criminal activities done by fiat and they don't mind using it.

Do I want bitcoin to be used to buy illegal drugs - no, not really. However, do I want people to be able to buy whatever they want without a third party telling them what they can and cannot do - absolutely. Much like the famous quote from Evelyn Hall - "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - I may disapprove of how people use bitcoin, but I would never dream of limiting their ability to do so.

There you go. Scammers, money launderers, drug dealers, etc. all existed before bitcoin did. If bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) disappeared tomorrow, these people aren't suddenly going to become clean and go out and get jobs - the few who use bitcoin or other cryptos will just back to using cash or other fiat options as they did before.

Makes sense only if you are ready to finally admit that every technology you have ever used, every technology that makes your everyday life easier, has been used by criminals to facilitate criminal activities. Be it automobiles, telephone, telegraph, Internet or bitcoin, every such sophisticated technology was firstly adopted by criminals. If technology survives in extreme conditions and proves it is suitable for risky situations, it becomes widely adopted by everyone, not just criminals. It is inevitable process, this is how technology evolves and spreads, whether we like it or not.

Makes sense, only if you want to glorify the crime! I understand drug is a big market worldwide and fiat has been used since thousand years for drugs but is it really where you want bitcoin to thrive on? Personally, I don't! But that matters least!

I also understand the fact that bitcoin network can never be cleaned completely. It will continue to be used for darknet transactions and for various illegal things just the way fiat money were used earlier.

The only thing I want to point out that "Privacy" is a feature that is being leveraged by the criminals worldwide and darknet is one of the prime examples! This illegal things would have thrived without bitcoin as well, but bitcoin (and Monero offcourse) is making it smoother for them! 

Don't take offense to this, but what have you done to increase adoption? Have you spoken to local merchants you use about bitcoin? Have you emailed larger companies expressing your desire to pay in bitcoin? Have you sought out business which accept bitcoin and spent your money with them? I see lots of people lamenting that bitcoin adoption is not more widespread, but I see very few people doing anything about it. Merchants aren't going to start accepting bitcoin unless they know there is a demand for it.

Curious as to why you think this? Perhaps you are using less reliable mixers? I have used ChipMixer extensively without ever having a single issue.

Privacy is actually the most overrated feature of Bitcoin.Bitcoin isn't private enough,that's why all the people,who have something to hide are using thirty party solutions,like Bitcoin mixers/tumblers.
Bitcoin has been used on the Darkweb,that's a fact and we can't change it.Actually,almost every altcoin can be used for darkweb transactions,but we are focusing on BTC,because it's the most popular cryptocurrency.
Achieving a scammer-free Bitcoin network is impossible.Cash is also being used by criminals,but we don't blame it for being "scammer-friendly".

- Use a P2P platforms instead of centralized exchanges that asks for KYC
- If you ever need to use a centralized exchange, check if they allow withdrawal for unverified accounts first
- Use services that further increases your online privacy such as VPN's and Tor

Other practices to increase your privacy:
- Maintain different wallets for storage, trading, and spending
- Use non-custodial wallets, preferably open-source

People need to understand this, if you link your name and address to a public address you can be traced back if there's an entity sufficiently interested in knowing who you are.

I mean, yes, but not really. As soon as you transfer your funds from a recurrent wallet to a exchange they can link your address to your name and address, and if, say, the police ever asks for information about you they might have, you're done. Here's where bitcoin mixing services come into play, there's a nice niche for these, but they are also not very reliable.

Privacy is but a myth otherwise.

Even now the criminal use if the third or the second thing that comes to minds of regular people when they hear about Bitcoin. Right now it's the most strongly being associated with volatility, and general population views it more as a risky investment rather than a currency that they would use for their day-to-day transactions because of that. Something needs to change with either the users or Bitcoin in order to see a larger adoption - maybe people have to rethink their values and the relationship they have with banks, or maybe Bitcoin has to be more stable and convenient. At this rate adoption rate is just too slow. I joined this community 4 years ago, and I don't see more merchants and services accepting Bitcoin, both locally and on the Internet.

It shouldn't affect adoption at all. But it would be nice if there were much more legal merchants accepting bitcoin than illegal merchants. By that I don't mean the illegal merchants somehow go away, because they won't, I mean more and more legal merchants must use bitcoin as well.

A sizable percentage of bitcoin payments are to scams, giveaways and ponzis. There are also such things that take cash as payment but there are exponentially more legit merchants who take cash payments as well, and this is where bitcoin needs to get to.

A meaningless argument. Privacy is the most over-used feature of cash by the scammers, money launderers, terrorists... etc.

The entire point of money is that it can be traded for goods and services. The entire point of trustless, decentralized, money is that it can be traded for any goods and services. Drugs are the second largest market in the world after food. Every fiat in existence has been used to buy drugs for thousands of years. If bitcoin couldn't be spent on drugs, then it's not really money, and it definitely isn't decentralized money.

A minority of bitcoin spending is on illegal goods and services, and of all illegal goods and services being bought, a tiny minority of them are bought with bitcoin.

How exactly does it negatively impact adoption though? If merchants and users were such puritans to refuse to use Bitcoin because criminals use, they also wouldn't use cash and some of the biggest banks too. The real problems that stop adoption are giant price volatility, lack of scalability, lack of regulation, complex user experience. Besides, darknet criminals have been switching to Monero for a long time already.

But most over-used feature of bitcoin by the scammers, money launderers, terrorists, drug dealers, arms dealers, Child pornography makers, PII sellers, contract killers etc. The list is long and I can write a 1000 words article on it. Those who have no idea what I am talking about, please visit dark web once with proper precautions like VPN and you will understand! Bitcoin literally is accepted everywhere in dark web for all sorts of illegal things. Dark web will open up a whole new world of bullshits in front of you - and yes, all powered by Bitcoin!


Earlier also, I had a long debate with fellow forum members on similar topic. It's true that blockchain ledger is open for public and every information is traceable there. But that doesn't really matter because even if the information is available, the information owner is not known! So even if we see someone sending millions of dollars using bitcoin, we don't know who is doing that! So the information matters least unless you can link it to an owner!

I am not bitcoin puritan but I really want to see a clean bitcoin network rather than being synonymous to illegal things! Just check the number of financial frauds happened in last 3 years and see how many are connected to bitcoin. Not a good picture, really!   

So for me, this privacy feature of bitcoin is really taking us off-track than bringing us on-track where we can see organic growth among the legal merchants and users. Really sad to see!

Privacy is one of the most underrated feature of bitcoin.

“I don’t need privacy, I have nothing to hide”
“Blockchain is a public ledger where all the informations are completely traceable”
Those are two very wrong and “dangerous ststements”.
Also, is very common, even for experienced users, to trade privacy for some convenience, a nice and easy UX, or some unnecessary feature.

Privacy has been recently targeted by many Anti-Bitcoin actors. Every bitcoier should then know how to recognise the threat and how to defend herself.

In this two part treatise Giacomo Zucco covers a series of misconception about privacy, and how to adopt the best practices to protect it.

A Treatise On Bitcoin And Privacy Part 1: A Match Made In The Whitepaper


A Treatise On Bitcoin And Privacy Part 2: Don’t Be Misled By Red Herrings

Italian translation available here:
Un trattato su Bitcoin e la Privacy

Other “privacy related” threads of mine:
Coinbase the most anti-Bitcoin organisation. Make #DeleteCoinbase great again
Dust Attack, what it is, why it is dangerous and how to prevent falling to it
[Total privacy Bitcoin]: off grid Transactions LoRaWan/goTenna
[PAXOS+COINJOIN]Your privacy is a threat to exchange business?#deletepaxos