Topic: Electrum installation with different wallets (Read 336 times)

The "central server" here is the Electrum server your Electrum wallet is connected to (or any other SPV wallet that talks Electrum protocol).

What does the Electrum server get to know about you?

• It knows your IP address from which your wallet on your device talks to it (your true IP address may be hidden behind Tor or other obfuscating VPN).
• It knows all your active wallet addresses within bounds of wallet's gap limit, i.e. used and unused addresses that your Electrum wallet lists in the Addresses tab. It knows and returns the address history to the Electrum wallet as this is what the latter asks for.
  To be clear: the Electrum server can identify all those wallet addresses to a wallet of one entity talking via the used IP address. A "normal" Electrum server doesn't do that, but potentially malicious ones could and Electrum servers run by blockchain intelligence companies certainly do this for sure.

So, if you want to separate two distinct wallets from each other, you have to avoid connecting both wallets to the same Electrum server via one IP address (doesn't matter if Clearnet or Tor). The only exception is, you run your own Electrum server and you know your own Electrum server doesn't do any wallet address attribution intelligence.

This is what nc50lc said here, but I wanted to emphasize the main message.

Obviously you should avoid to connect both wallets via Bitcoin transactions. Better not send coins to each other. Better not send coins from each wallet to same addresses of some other entity.

Because it's easy to make a privacy mistake or run into issues when a particular foreign Electrum server isn't responsive or online, I run my own Electrum server to which all my wallets talk exclusively to. It's fairly easy to setup on a Raspi 4B and up (8GB of RAM is recommended). You can run Umbrel for the mouse tosser noobs or with more experience setup something like Raspibolt or Raspiblitz.

That's a fancy little detail implemented in Electrum, the color is interactive:
Green (connected), Blue (proxy), Orange (lagging), Red (disconnected); and the first three with "fork detected" arrows.

The main server "kitty" wont see your real IP since you're connected through Tor,
it still can log your bitcoin addresses though so do not open your other wallets while connected to the same server.

Those "connected nodes" do not receive the same data as your selected server since those are mainly used to download blockheaders
which will then be used to cross-check if the server is providing you accurate data. Your client wont be sending wallet-related data to those.

For privacy concerns, notice that it still connects to clearnet nodes?
Apparently, that's an issue but it's not explained in their official documentation, here: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tor.html
My best guess is there's a small potential that a Tor entry+exit node can identify your IP.

With your precious help I managed to connect electrum to a tor node.
I used the oneserver feature and used the node suggested as example by nc50lc sapplying this command
and managed to connect electrum to a Tor node ( I guess  ).

This is what I can see under Network tab :



If I get it correclty it means that only that kitty etc etc ( that is a tor server ) can look into my wallet and those "other known servers" do nothing with it; also if I want to preserve my privacy I just have to use another tor server to connect to everytime I use another separate wallet on the same machine where I have that elecrtum installation. Correct?

If I remove the "-1" part to use the mupltiple server option
I see this under network


does it mean each of those 10 nodes am connected to can see into my wallet and other stuff ( IP, MAC address etc etc) or just the kitty one and the other are there for electrum to perform the headers crosscheck? or what?

By the way I noticed electrum network icon on bottom right is not green nor red but blue : why is that?

It's a bit more private in a way that you're not exposing your real IP and locale but the server can still link your different wallets to one another if you're using them with that same Electrum client.

Anyways, you can do BitMaxz' instructions every time you need to use Electrum or set it up as a "service" which will run automatically in the background.
Follow these instructions to set it as windows service (images don't load at the moment since talkimg is down): /index.php?topic=5505213

It's worth noting that according to the notes in Electrum's official doc website, the proxy should be different if you're using Tor Browser Bundle:

Yes, you need to open the Tor browser because the Tor browser handles the connection to the Tor network and provides socks5 proxy. Closing it, the proxy will disconnect.

Tor daemon only works on Linux, but there's an alternative one. You can download the Tor Expert Bundle and run it through the command prompt.

To run it, open CMD then go to the folder where you extracted the file if you already downloaded it from the link I provided, use "cd" command and paste the folder path sample below.


After entering that command next command is this one below


Now it runs and waits for bootstrapped to reach 100%, and it's done. You can now begin opening the Electrum using your Tor setup.

It works for me using the server provided by nc50lc above.

No Tor daemon running ( not a tech guy here as you may figure out) but wasn't aware I had to open tor browser while trying to use electrum with tor.

Thanks for these inputs, will play around a bit more to see if I can manage to use it in a bit more private way.

That particular server is offline at the moment.

If you want to check some online servers, unload your wallet first by selecting a dummy wallet so Electrum will open it by default, close Electrum (so the auto-selected server wont see your real wallet)
Run without -s and select any available onion server that's in your server list, use it as server (right-click) to see if you can connect then take note of its onion address and port.
Then, use it in your -s arg and play with :t or :s to see which one will work.

e.g., this server is always online (just for example, I'm not endorsing any server):

And have you setup a running "Tor daemon" or have an open "Tor Browser Bundle" in the background?
Because Electrum wont connect to Tor without either one of those.

I followed the steps described in the link you posted but regardless I apply in the proper field this command for the single server option



or this one for the multiple servers one


my electrum wallet doesn't connect ( am using a PC with windows 10 running).

I can see under electrum network menu that those parameters are applied but the light at the bottom right remains red.

Any clue anybody?

One server or multiple depends on your need
What's more important privacy or options to prevent over reliant that could lead to incorrect information Incase of failures.
If you want privacy then single but options and a form of safety then multiple.
Well recommended server?  Don't really know but would add that it should be a . Onion server which is specific to Tor hidden service.

About the VPN, it would prevent your server from knowing that you using TOR.

But all this mean nothing if both wallet sends funds to same location.

That's a good example but it's better if you know what those command line arguments do.

Let me explain:

• "-1" enables oneserver, the full named arg --oneserver works the same.
• In the "-s" or --server , the value is in the following format: server:port:protocol
  whereas the protocol can either be "t" for "tcp" or "s" for "ssl", the suggested 't' may not work depending on the server of your choice.
• Lastly, you can use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost although it's the same if you come across an issue where you'll have to manually tick "Use Tor Proxy at port..." option in the GUI.
  Happens in W11 sometimes (since the example is for Windows).

This depends entirely on your understanding about blockchain.

As long as you don't send coins to the same addresses, you are basically fine

But if you decide to send coins from both wallets to the same CEX, you will probably get detect by a deep bloclchain analysis.

This is just an example. Basically, you must spend coins in different stuff and never try to consolidate those coins in a 3rd wallet

Thanks everyone for taking the time to answer here and share your knowledge. A bit of fog has cleared but please have a little patience to help me see even more clearly.
Let's assume I can have what dkbit98 defines
so there is no way using blockchain analysis to detect that those two hypothetical wallets I mantioned in OP belongs to the same device/entity and therefore let's not talk about that aspect again.


What I would like to focus on now is this part :

I checked that link and still need some suggestions: the first part of that article leaves me two choices


What do you guys think is the best way to go or anyway what is the way you are doing/ would do? One server only or multiple servers and why? Eventually any server to recommend?


I'm also not sure on the copy/paste part

Lets take as example the one server only option as same will apply to multiple servers one.
If I read this in the box named target does it mean I just have to copy paste in a way the final result will be
correct?

Concluding connecting throu TOR makes someone able to hide their real IP to the servers you are connecting to but still the server is able to detect the two wallets belong to the same device.
Using a VPN improves things in some way? If so, what improvements does it bring to privacy while using electrum?

Using tor can definitely improve your privacy by hiding your real IP. Hence, it will prevent the servers your wallet is connected to from linking your addresses to your real IP but it can not prevent them from linking those addresses to each other which is what OP is trying to achieve.
To achieve this, you will need to connect electrum to your own node , connect to different servers or use a different tor circuit for each wallet.

If you use many addresses in a same wallet for transactions, sites with tool like https://www.walletexplorer.com/ can connect your addresses and know that it belongs to 1 wallet.

IP addresses can be known if you connect your Electrum wallet to Electrum server without Tor. You can use Tor for your Electrum wallet if you are careful about your privacy.

Using Electrum wallet through Tor.

You got it right.
With that in mind, even the addresses within the same wallet could be seen unlinked with each other at face value with the right technique.

The selected server can see all of your wallets' addresses which can link them together as owned by a single IP (same entity).
That server setting is saved in the "config" file inside Electrum's datadir so it's globally set unlike other settings that's unique per wallet.

Here's one way to use different servers per wallet:
Create separate electrum datadirs contaning separate wallet file with their associated shortcuts using --dir= arg.
Select different servers per datadir/wallet.

...Or start a personal server to connect your Electrum to.

Linked how exactly?
This would only be possible if you send transactions from one addresses to another, or if you connected addresses from both seeds with same third address.
This has nothing to do with Electrum or any other wallet, but with good address management.

Maybe only IP addresses if you didn't use your own bitcoin node, but you can always use different Tor or VPN to mask your location.
Some wallets have integrated Tor switch already (Trezor, Stack wallet, Unstoppable, etc).

Hosseinimr93 has answered your question already. All transactions are recorded on blockchain and it is available to the public. I mean the  location should be changed so that central server can only see the location that you used. So if both locations are different, both can not be tracked to the same person. Tor can help in having anonymity in a way that what you are doing can be known but no one knows who is doing it. If the location ar different, it can not be linked to the same anonymous person.

I am not sure I am understadning you correctly, but note that all transactions are recorded in the blokchain and people can use any block explorer to check them.
It doesn't matter you made your transaction with your real IP address or you used TOR connection. All people in the world can see your address on block explorers.

The fact is that nodes you are connected to can see a lot of things including your IP addresses. That means that even if you transact with both wallets without broadcasting a transaction that connects both wallets like moving funds across them, nodes you are connected to will still notice the similar IP.

Another thing that ELECTRUM servers can also see is all your transactions on both wallets which simply means that if you obviously move funds across them then it can be noticed. People who don't want to share these data including their public address and their connection with other nodes prefer to run their own nodes and make use of VPNs to mask their address. So yes both wallets will be noticed that they are from same device except you use different IP addresses when accessing them.

Is it possible that if your electrum wallet is connected to Tor, and you change the location of your country that all the transaction done with your electrum wallet will not be visible. i.e, will someone be able to see the address that you sent bitcoin to from blockchair.com , or it will be impossible. I was telling someone about this yesterday, but couldn't explain further, because I have not tried it.

The central server that you connect to can know the IP address. Also the ISP that you are using can know somethings about what you doing. You can user Tor instead and make sure you change the location to another country anytime you want to connect. You can permanently connect Electrum with Tor in a way that it will not work or synchronize if you do not connect with Tor. But best if you can use have your own node but still run it with Tor for privacy reasons.

Are you running your own server and connected via TOR?

If yes, then there is no way to link both the wallets as long as there is no TXs linking each other's address.

If no, then electrum servers know that both the wallets are managed by the same IP which indirectly connects that two wallets belong to the same user.

That's not an issue, two seedphrases mean two completely different wallets. But someone can know that multiple addresses belong to one wallet (when it spends) if you're not careful.

As for the IP address, then the Electrum server you're connected to, could know your IP address.

If I install Electrum on a PC with Electrum and lets say I generate two wallets ( so two different seed phrases for each) is there a way to detect the address(es) of a wallet are linked to the one(s) of the other one?


As far as I know on blockchain, if addresses don't interact each other, it is not possible (two seed phrases=two completely separate wallet , correct me if I'm wrong on this), but are there other way like let's say IPs , MAC address, the router I use and stuff like that?