Topic: Don't send your personal data to anyone in PM (Read 195 times)

If you really care about privacy, please use PGP.

Privnote is fine for most purposes, if you are okay with the chance of the site having MITM and being able to read your messages. Their encryption doesn't matter because the website can insert a backdoor as and when they like, unless you're having another layer of encryption of course. It might just be more prudent to establish a PGP WOT and have a way to validate the identity and the authenticity of the message as well.

On a bitcoin forum, trading stuff with bitcoin they should have a bitcoin wallet which means they also have a public key which can give the other person to encrypt the data with. If people take encrypting their data more seriously and it becomes a habit, other wallet software will add the same encryption methods as Electrum. You can also ask them to add the new feature so that you aren't limited to Electrum only.

The underlying technology of the blockchain and the first application of Bitcoin solved the problem of trust between strangers, but it still cannot solve all kinds of trust in real life. If everyone is anonymous, wouldn't everyone live Two worlds, it feels like agents.

It only takes one PM exchange between you and the other person to get hold of his public key. Many people don't use PGP, but Electrum is one of the most popular Bitcoin wallets and even newbies know about it. Downloading, verifying the signatures, and installing it is easy peasy and it gives you a good way to encrypt and decrypt messages.   

Well, yes. That works great if you have available the public key of the receiver. But if you're sending data to a person that doesn't have a public key (or a newbie), then using a service like privnote is great, as it just works for anyone in the world.

Thank you, I have accumulated a decent number of such services. Perhaps it will be useful to someone in the future. I will try to create a similar list this week in the Service Discussion board.

In addition, we can recommend one more service. Since many here trust open-source services that can be verified, there is a service that contains open sources. This plays a big role for lovers of anonymity since closed sources can contain anything.

https://github.com/onetimesecret/onetimesecret
https://onetimesecret.com/

Thanks for that information, I didn't know there are too many of them that service a self-destructing message after receiving it.

That's a good idea if you will make a separate table with a large list of that kind of service, it also includes the feature they had and how much time before the text content will be destructed after seeing it from the receiver.  Also, might there be a limit of characters that you need to input.

By the way, all your big lists have been bookmarked of mine, it would be nice if there's a list on this too.

So far I haven't made any transactions via PM unless I want to ask some established users about my doubt. But once I read the reason why we shouldn't share our personal information in PM to anyone from your thread, then I will avoid it as much as possible. Maybe I could consider providing personal data to use certain service like gambling or exchange site, but of course I can't do that with someone via PM even if they are a trusted user.

I've never heard of privnote, maybe because I've never done transaction with anyone, especially in this forum. But I'll probably look into this thread if I want to do it in the future. Yes it is suitable for reference.

Honestly, I have never heard of Privnote, but I will bookmark this thread as it can come in handy sometimes in the future. Can't say that I find the service particularly attractive and it could be a great honeypot for various agencies and organizations. Not saying it is, just that someone somewhere could get interested in the content that is being sent over the service.

PGP encrypted messages work just fine.
Besides PGP, you could just encrypt a message with your Electrum wallet and PM it to the other party. Just click on Tools > Encrypt/decrypt messages.
Enter your message, the public key of the receiver, and click on encrypt.

- Zerobin
- PrivateBin
- Pastebin
- 0bin
- DestructingMessage
- ONETIMESECRET
- TMWSD
- QuickForget

If interested, I can make a whole separate table with a large list of services with self-destroying content, from text to pictures and voice messages.

Privnote is the only platform that I used before when I have purchased a collectible coin to Hhampuz and it needs to send my personal details and location for the receiving address.  And I tend to agree with the OP, we should need to use this for personal security purposes.  Using self-destruction tools can be useful.

Due to curiosity because it was said above that this privnote isn't safe and I have been a search a little to find a good alternative on Privnote.  But these are what I have found.

• https://safenote.co/
• https://1ty.me/

Some of them are android app and I didn't include them.  Can anyone have been used this or are there other good alternatives aside from privnote?

Anyway, thanks for this good and informative input OP, it's bookmarked now.

Phishing sites appear constantly and for different services. I'm not sure if this can be used as an additional argument against using real services. It's like stopping trusting you because someone created your fake to deceive people.

Yes, you are probably right. I prefer not to trust the Internet at all and only communicate with people I see and know.
Nevertheless, the story of the privnote.com fake site, although old, is not safe from its repetition.
A similarly named phishing site that masqueraded as an anonymous note service was stealing bitcoins.

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/06/15/encrypted-messaging-site-privnote-cloned-to-steal-bitcoin/

The message of this topic is slightly different. The topic is not for those who do not want to give out their personal data. This topic solves other problems, not to create additional copies of your personal data, which will be stored in someone's correspondence, and so on. For those who do not want to give out their name and geolocation to anyone, this method will not work; in such cases, a different approach is used. Using PO Boxes or third-party delivery services from other countries.

---

Use a breakdown of your data across several similar services, for example. Although, if you have highly developed paranoia, then it is better for you not to use any services at all, because everywhere you see a catch and a keen eye of your big brother.

I used this service a long time ago. Through it on the forums, various kinds of "freebies" are often distributed, intended for distribution on one hand.
But for private messages, I would also be more careful. Passing important information to the service is a dubious matter. This reminds me of VPN services that swear they don't keep their clients' logs. Which is ultimately sheer nonsense. If such services exist, they are unlikely to have only good intentions.

I think the forum is just one of the potential privacy problems we face in our daily lives, and I think that this forum is by far one of the most privacy friendly websites around.

We are forced on daily basis to give our name, phone, address, documents, etc to buy most of the things we want. Every time you buy something online (from home appliances to travel tickets) we are asked for personal information. Soemtimes even to watch a video or download a PDF we are asked what is our email address or your phone number.

My suggestion is that, if you are really worried about your privacy, just rent a mailbox and get a pre paid phone card. You can just rent a mailbox near your house or your work and you can give that mail box address when requested. And use the pre paid phone card when requested, whcih are (at least in brazil) not linked to your ID.

I never used PrivNote so far, I don't see any activity on their blog and social media accounts since year 2020, and I think there are much better ways of private communication between members.
It's better to use your own direct encryption for bitcointalk messages than some third party website that you need to trust for encryption.
However, I do think it would be evry interesting if theymos would add option for self-destructing PMs and some privacy options, but this is probably just my sci-fi dream

On this forum, in addition to buying / selling cryptocurrencies and buying various digital goods, there is also trade in physical goods, which are then delivered to you. And here the question arises: what to do with your personal data? On the forum, I still meet similar questions, even among old members who are faced with such deals for the first time.

Never send your personal data to PM, and this applies not only to this forum, but also to other sites. Even if you trust a person, your personal data can be compromised:

• account of the person to whom you sent your personal data can be hacked and then the correspondence will be in the hands of the attacker;
• site on which the correspondence was conducted may be hacked;
• recipient's account can be associated with a mailbox to which incoming messages are duplicated, and if his mail is hacked, then your personal data may be in insecure hands;

To avoid leaving such traces, use a self-destructing note service, for example: Privnote.
Thus, you protect your data from accidental storage in the correspondence of other people or site servers.

How to use this method:

1. You want to buy something on the forum, be it a collectible or mining equipment. To do this, you agree with the seller and he asks you to send him the data for sending the goods.

2. Open Privnote and write your data:



3. You can also select additional options:

• choose when the note will be destroyed (immediately after reading or after a certain time)
• set a password to encrypt note
• indicate the e-mail to which you will receive a notification that your note has been read and destroyed (do not use your main e-mail for this purpose)

4. After creating a note, a link will be created, which will also indicate when exactly this note will be destroyed:



5. After generating the link, send it to the seller with whom you completed the deal. He will read this note and it will be destroyed. Thus, you will protect your personal data from further storage in someone's correspondence or on the server.

---

How does privnote work and is it really safe to send messages with private information?

What happens when you create a note:


What happens when you open a note: