Topic: f*ck you (Read 873 times)

Bitcoin provides "pseudo anonymity".  Meaning the whole difficult to trace, it can be done with some effort.   There are some Alts that are better suited for anonymity because they have stealth addresses.  Take a look in the altcoin section.   I was hearing the name "shadowcash" a lot a month or so ago.   Check to see if that is still a viable option.

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Then bitcoin is not the crypto currency for you.  There are others that specialize in anonymity, but bitcoin does not/has never had anonymity as a priority or consideration.

How do you know that you can trust the operator of the "mixer" not to be the person you are hiding from?  How do you know that the "mixer" is doing a good enough job of "mixing" that the transaction can't be traced with well written software running on powerful computers?


Unless you are making an anonymous donation to a charity that has a publicly known bitcoin address, you will need to communicate with whomever you are sending those bitcoins to.  If you are receiving anything in exchange, then you may have to give that person information about yourself (IP address, mailing address, name, phone number, email address, etc.).  How do you know that the person you are sending the bitcoins to is not the person you are hiding from?  How do you know that the person you are sending the bitcoins to won't accidentally or intentionally leak your information to whomever you are hiding from?  How do you know that your communication channel isn't being monitored by the person you are trying to hide from?


It's not clear from the few details you've provided that you've given any thought at all to what it means to be truly anonymous.  It also isn't clear just how anonymous you want to be.

You just don't want your family to know what your spending your money on?
You just don't want your employer to know what you're spending your money on?
You just don't want your local law government agencies to know what you're spending your money on?
You just don't want the person you are transacting with to know who you are and where you live?
You just don't want your country's national government agencies to know what you're spending your money on?
You don't want any government agency anywhere in the world to ever know for the next 100 years that you were in any way associated with a particular transaction (or set of transactions)?

If you are really paranoid, you only have to make sure you are not sending funds from two or more addresses of yours in one transaction instead of creating multiple wallets because there is no wallets in Bitcoins.

well one thing I don't think has been mentioned is your IP address. You have to go through significant effort to keep your IP address private.

regarding your steps above, my comments

1) really, just run your own wallet. SPV wallets make it easy to run a wallet without needing too much of a headache regarding full node.
2 - 3) ok
4 - 6) i don't know.

There is currently a lot of effort going into privacy solutions for cryptocurrencies. Indeed, one of the bitcoin core devs is working on a solution (requires side chains), and there are multiple altcoins that have viable solutions. I am a proponent of Monero for many reasons, but if your skill level is where it is, the learning curve for monero can be considerably steep (much patience required).

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You can use bitcoin mixer service, example: bitmixer.io or you can use Monero or DASH.

Better to use desktop wallet, my recommendation is electrum, you don't need to download the data, thread here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/electrum-20-release-973768


~iki

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What makes you think that bitcoin will keep you anonymous?


How do you get a U.S. dollar bill account for the dollar bills that are in your wallet?

You can either run your own bitcoin wallet software that will allow you complete control over your own bitcoins, or you can turn all your bitcoins over to the control of some third party that you've decided to trust and they can give you an "account" in their system.


An address and an account are NOT the same thing, just like the U.S. dollar wallet in your back pocket and your U.S. dollar based account at the bank are not the same thing.

If you want to receive funds that you have full control over, then you'll want to run bitcoin wallet software.  The wallet software will generate bitcoin addresses that you can use to receive bitcoins and will allow you to create transactions that will send bitcoins.

If you prefer not to have full control over your own bitcoins, then you can get an "account" at a service such as Circle, Coinbase, Localbitcoins, etc.  They will allow you to use some of their bitcoin addresses so that when they receive the bitcoins at any of those addresses they will be credited to the account that they have set up in their own database for you.


Install bitcoin wallet software.  Generate bitcoin addresses.


It's simple enough for most people.  It all depends on your personal technical abilities.


Paper wallets are great for receiving bitcoins and storing them for a long time.  They tend to be rather inconvenient for bitcoins that you intend to spend with any frequency.


Anonymity is nearly impossible with an "account".  If you really want to be 100% anonymous, then you'll need to run your own wallet software and you'll want to make sure that it connects to the bitcoin network over some anonymizing service.  Furthermore, bitcoin does not guarantee anonymity.  It is very easy to leak identifying information such that it can be connected by someone to at least some of your addresses.  With enough expertise and care, bitcoin does provide the ability to maintain some level of anonymity, but you'll need to thinnk very carefully about who and what you are trying to hide your activity from and what resources they will have available to identify you.  Anonymity is not automatic with bitcoin.


My advice?

Think very hard about who and what you are hiding from and what resources they will have to identify you.  Think about the fact that you will have to communicate with someone to get them to send you bitcoins, and you may need to communicate with someone to send bitcoins to them.  Any information you give to the person you are communicating with (such as an address, phone number, name, email, etc) may unexpectedly share that information with others.  While "mixers" may try to obfuscate the transaction trail, advanced forensic accounting software and very powerful computers may be able to unravel the chain of transactions and determine what you sent and where you sent it.  It is also possible that the "mixer" that you choose could be a "honeypot" operated by the very people you are trying to hide from.

Bitcoin is more of a private network than an anonymous one. It can be used in ways that make it basically anonymous, but it will take some effort. You may want to look into "coin mixers", and using addresses only one time. Every single transaction that has ever been done with bitcoin is reviewable by anyone. The sending and receiving addresses are recorded, however no identity is associated with those transactions.

This link is to a website that let's you explore the blockchain. You can see all the activity on the network. If you wanted to know who is sending/receiving all that money you must associate the addresses with identities. This may be done by figuring out a mathematical relationship between addresses that proves several addresses come from the same wallet. Once you have that you can start to look for references that link any of the addresses to anyone. By extension the other Tx's from that wallet surely have the same owner.

https://blockchain.info/

Appreciate the help thanks... Additional question - is it advised to create multiple wallets to help remain anonymous? (eg use wallets as throw-away wallets, used for a week then not touched again etc)

Choose a wallet from https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet. You can see comparison there.

I don't recommend paper wallet to you as you are newbie. Once you start familiarizing with Bitcoin address and transactions, we can talk more about paper wallets. Now, best thing for you is to use a normal wallet.

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