Topic: [Bc.i] Taint Analysis and Questions (Read 877 times)

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I have been buying (and mixing) BTC on my own for several months now.  I am still a beginner with no Comp Sci background, learning on my own.  There are few knowledgeable people about Bitcoin where I live.

One of the tools I really like is blockchain.info's Taint Analysis tool.  If I understand correctly, the taint analysis shows how effective the mixing service is in hiding the the originating and receiving wallets.  Which is great, as one of the reasons why BTC is of great interest is that it is relatively easy to gain some privacy.

Some questions:

1)  blockchain.info's service measures a percentage of taint for a LOT of wallets.  What exactly is that?  I already know that a low percentage is best, but what does that number mean (or how is it calculated)?

2)  I have noticed sometimes that the colored bars (next to the sending wallet IDs) sometimes have a number "2" in them.  Does this mean that those (intermediary) wallets were involved in mixing twice (or whatever the number would be)?  I presume that one would want as few repeated wallets as possible...

3)  Does anyone else other than blockchain.info have a free taint analysis tool?

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Re the above, when I receive BTC, I typically mix them by sending them first to bitmixer.io and THEN use blockchain.info's SharedCoin service.  Running both of them in sequence seems to keep the taints very low.  I have used both services some 15 times each, with no problems (other than a glitch at SharedCoin, but I got the problem resolved OK with the help of their support staff).

But, I would be interested in comments on using BOTH services in sequence as well re security & privacy.

Many, many thanks!