Topic: Privacy Questions: Public Servers, TOR, VPN, etc. (Read 544 times)

DireWolfM14

When I have a little time, I will study carefully your thread.

When I have LOT of time, I'll look really hard look at Umbrel, hardware and related software.

Hey guys, I hope this helps: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61534478

I am likely in a very similar situation to OROBTC in some ways, at least in the sense that I don't want to do very much at this time.  It seems that anything that I do takes a lot of time, and even last year when I kept telling myself that I should start to use lightning network and try to fit in the use (and learning of lightning network) at some time, it took me nearly half of the year before I finally put some money on BlueWallet.. and of course, CashApp had incorporated some lighting abilities in the last year too, but still some might suggest that these kinds of abilities to spend and use lightning (even though surely mostly custodial - even from my understanding there may be some ways to set up BlueWallet as non-custodial if you have your own lightning node) are not really using or knowing about lightning network because the ONLY thing that I accomplished in a whole year is to be able to use a couple of different lightning custodial services/wallets.

Part of my point is that I tend to be really slow to add new things to my already existing practices, and sometimes I am reluctant to disclose my own limited number of things that I am doing related to bitcoin - or to suggest possible vulnerabilities that I might have in terms of the places in which I hold my coins or how I might diversify my locations or possibly lessen some of my risks in regards to storage and/or transacting...

Probably, if I felt myself to be more stationary I would have experimented with some of the bitcoin node matters or even mining way earlier, and my understanding is that lightning node is even more difficult than regular bitcoin node issues, so surely if any node were to come it would be to start with a regular node before even going down the lightning node route.

Ever since I got into bitcoin (in late 2013), part of my goal was to be able to be able to have options to transact in bitcoin when mobile.. or when moving from place to place, even if I might have been attempting to maintain some base locations.. and surely 2013 projections of what I would be doing may well differ from what I ended up doing, but some of the goals of trying to retain and maintain some mobile abilities has not disappeared, even if sometimes I have been stuck in one location for considerable amounts of time.  

In some sense, I personally have been disinclined to set up some kind of a node at my base location and to communicate back and forth through something like that even when mobile, because it seems like a step too far in terms of what I want to do or how I want to spend my time ... or that I am going to get sucked into trying to do stuff in which I don't want to be spending very much time doing (because there are ONLY so many hours in each day)... because it is enough for me to merely just be juggling around with various bitcoin user-interfaces in the way that I currently do, and keeping track of coins and even just making sure that I have backups for various set ups that I have tried to employ and that sometimes may well be geographically separate (even if the set ups might have times in which they are geographically together too, depending on where I am at.. and then having to rethink some of these matters from time to time because just keeping coins safe and even considering potential successor type issues can take a lot of time and efforts.. just what I consider to be some of the basics, like that)..

Part of my thinking with the Mac was that when I travel I tend to have a couple of computers, and the Mac is a back-up to my main computer.., so my back up Mac is not really being used on a regular basis, but I don't really feel like I should have it set up in a way that it is running some other kind of operating system.

Yes, the back up may not be doing much of anything except maybe running to show some BTC prices or maybe some rudimentary types of back up search that I might do on it from time to time or that I might hand it over to someone to use on another guest log-in on a temporary basis.  

So in that sense, I want my back up Mac to run something close to the same Mac software that I run on my primary computer in case my primary computer breaks down or has to go in for repair, but at the same time, I was thinking that the back up computer might be able to run node software... and perhaps even be a way to connect a Trezor to the back up computer so that I don't have to go through Trezor's server in order to access the coins on my Trezor.. or some other variation of accessing coins in that kind of a way.. but it is not like I want to be able to do that or to learn about all of those kinds of things at one time anyhow, even though I have been thinking about those kinds of things.. but still ONLY having only a little amount of time that I might add one change or another.. but with my back up Mac I have a 2 TB SSD, so maybe having 1 TB out of the 2 TB SSD available for running a node might still be o.k. .and then if my primary computer were to break down, then I could still use my backup, but at that time, I would probably shut the node software off while using it as a backup (then as a primary.. since my primary would be out of service).. or at least not run the bitcoin node software if I were to be temporarily using that back up computer as a primary.  

In my years of using Macs, I have found that they don't seem to break down too often, but with anything they do sometimes break down or have periods in which they cannot be used and may take a week or two to repair if they need some kind of servicing... which the backup computer comes in handy.. and sometimes a burden to lug around when traveling for a few months at a time, but I do sometimes engage in those kinds of activities to travel and to travel too heavily and to have my back-up with me while traveling, even if I don't seem to have to use it too often. .it is still nice to have, overall... and could serve as a node during that period that it is not really being used, extensively.

I am also familiar with the idea that some things are not as difficult as they might seem to be, but it is still the case that sometimes it is not easy for any of us (mere mortals) to add something new onto our schedules.  

For example, for the past 6 months or so, I have had a plan to go on a two month or more long trip that should be easy to accomplish, but I have not gone on such trip since I had some things that I felt that I needed to put into place prior to going on such trip (because I thought that the trip would be at least a couple of months, and things need to be in an adequate order before booking such a long trip), so it has already been several months that my trip has been delayed and delayed and more delayed and frustratingly delayed merely because it can take a while to set things up in order to feel sufficiently comfortable and not feeling any need to come back either, so sometimes I consider that all I need is to add more work for myself in terms of adding some other project of setting up a bitcoin node at home, even if in theory that it would not take very long to accomplish.. but still I would have to fit in such new project.. so how many hours are there in the day. .don't I need to sleep?  How is that going to happen if I am already having a delay in a trip that I have been thinking about for half a year but still not able to make my travel reservations because I don't have all of my "other shit" sufficiently together in order to feel comfortable with leaving for a couple of months or even in a kind of indefinitely longer status.

By the way, I had heard that the Embassy presents itself as a kind of plug and play node device that can do quite a few things and even be set up at home while a person is traveling.. but even the Embassy people describe that the Embassy device is not exactly plug and play and can take a bit of time to get comfortable with some of the set up and some of the interactions that might be made through such a device, and that all sounds fine and dandy as something that could be added by more and more regular (normies) people (including yours truly, and perhaps even OROBTC? - hate to speak for him).. in the future.

Absolutely! These are generally referred to as a "node in a box". You buy the box, plug it in, and you have a node. You could look at MyNode as an example. But all of these kinds of things bring a price which is far higher than if you just set up a node yourself.

There are lots of very newbie friendly Linux distros which do not require any command line stuff to set up and run. I would suggest looking at Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Both have GUIs which will feel very familiar to most people. And of course Bitcoin Core itself can be run entirely from the GUI.

I have a separate device for running my node (as I suspect most people do), but there's nothing stopping you from running a node on your main device.

I would still say just give it a go. If you get half way through and throw your hands up in frustration, then you've lost nothing and at least you can say you tried.

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o_e_l_e_o

Yes, JJG pretty much nails my situation.  I may very well have enough spare computer horsepower around, and I agree with you that learning by doing (and asking for help when stumped) is a valid learning method, even for an older guy like me.

Computer learning curves have always been steep for me, starting when I was in college decades ago...

I have found the community is indeed very open to helping out the less technically inclined guys like me.  I have learned a lot here.

I am not sure whether I should say anything - but in some sense, I believe that I am relating to OROBTC in the sense that he seems to be wanting something that is more of a kind of plug and play solution, if there is such a thing, even though it does not hurt to continue to learn and to see what other forum members are saying on these kinds of ease of use topics.

When you suggest to get an old laptop and to install and run Linux on it, I am already scared away.  Maybe it is easy peasy to run Linux, but when I personally think of easy peasy, I prefer GUI interfaces.. and yeah.. I know that is kind of stupid... because any of us should be able to NOT get scared away when we have a command window in front of us... but I am sure that many folks get scared off as soon as they consider that they might have to type in a command rather than click on a button... or to choose from a list of buttons. 

What if I have an old Mac and I want to run some variation of MacOS 12.x software on it? but to run a node from that? 

Running bitcoin core might not be a bad idea, right?  But do I have to remove other software from that Mac.. what if I still want to use that Mac as a back up.. can I also use it as a kind of node too? 

Trade-offs with that? I suppose..  but some folks (even in bitcoinlandia, and even some folks who have mostly held their own private keys for quite a while) ONLY use Macs even though it's kind of dumb and there are various centralization trust issues with the closed apple ecosystem... but it tends to be easier for some folks who feel that they do not have time to be studying a lot of different computer-related language thingies and maybe just learning through something like the Mac/apple closed system - including it's various tradeoffs, that might be what some folks are willing to juggle.. not exactly speaking on behalf of OROBTC, but maybe attempting to suggest a framework in which I can relate.. I am not totally unwilling to learn, but I prefer to have something kind of GUI based.. and then like you say, hands on one step at a time that might lure me in but not necessarily require me to have to front-load a lot of learning time but just based on some of my basic knowledge that does not tend to involve command lines.

I would say that the best way to learn is simply to try it. You don't need to spend any bitcoin (or any other money) or set up any wallets holding actual bitcoin in order to install Linux on an old device, set up Core, run Electrum or Sparrow, etc., and just get a feel for how they all work and interact. The best way to learn is by doing! Once you've played around with the software for a while, then you can commit a tiny amount of bitcoin to try the actual send/receive functions, or alternatively run everything on testnet and practice for free.

All of the software you have mentioned - Linux, Core, Sparrow, Electrum - have extensive set up guides and documentation, as well as a very helpful online community here which can assist with any troubleshooting.

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Hey mates!  Thank you all again for your suggestions on increasing privacy for us relatively beginner Bitcoiners!   I just noted that I had been hoarding merits, so I decided to spread some holiday cheer around for everyone.  (Although I have been noticing at "The Social Club" (Wall Observer) that meriting has become controversial..)  <-- WTF?  What do we have to do, call in the lawyers...?  Yeesh.

* * *

Maybe next thread start I will ask how this can be done easily (explained in language that even my three-and-a-half year old grandson could understand).  I still am not ready for various next steps (my own node, Bitcoin Core, Sparrow wallet, Linux, hardware requirements, etc.) because I don't know enough about them, and they seem daunting.

Please accept my Best Wishes for a Happy 2023.  

But no option to import an individual address or private key. I even tried making a watch only wallet in Electrum containing individual addresses (rather than from an xpub) and importing that Electrum file to Sparrow, but it returned an error about an invalid wallet type.

Are you sure that you are using the latest version of Sparrow wallet version 1.7.1?
There are several options to import mnemonic words(BIP39), Electrum import, and Master Private Key (BIP32),
I didn't try import function myself, but if that doesn't work in your case than you can try contacting Sparrow devs or write an issue on their github page.

I really like how clean and simple Spparow wallet is, but it's not perfect and there are some things I don't like that needs to be fixed.
In one case I connected hardware wallet with Sparrow and later I wanted to delete this connection, but that was impossible to do.

I installed LND, boltz-lnd, and loopd on my secondary server, with RTL as the frontend.  So it's not that I don't have the ability or tools, but given Lightning's "experimental" nature, I don't like opening channels with more than about $50 worth of bitcoin at a time.  Maybe I'm just being paranoid.  


That is definitely one of the drawbacks of Sparrow Wallet.  I'm not sure why the developers don't incorporate the ability to import single private keys.  The dialogue page for creating or importing a new "software" wallet only provides the ability to import a Bip39 mnemonic phrase, a master private key for an HD wallet, or a wallet created with an Electrum seed phrase.  A note about the Electrum wallets:  You can't import an Electrum seed directly, you have to create a wallet file in Electrum and import the file.  Yet another drawback, is that you can't export single private keys.

Sparrow is a decent wallet for beginners; it has a great UI, has a simple blockchain explorer built in, and for those who use coinjoin, it does have Samourai incorporated.  But, for those of us who want advanced controls it does lack quite few features.

Yes. I've tried importing both individual private keys and addresses into Sparrow, and it won't do it.

Ahh, I haven't tried importing individual private keys in to Sparrow yet. Do you run in to the same problem as I did above trying to import individual addresses to a watch only wallet - i.e. you can't do it?

If high fees is the concern, you can just open up a channel with Robosats: https://lightningnetwork.plus/nodes/0282eb467bc073833a039940392592bf10cf338a830ba4e392c1667d7697654c7e. Otherwise, use Bisq (which might come more cheap for large amounts).

I confirm that I still need Electrum to use ChipMixer. 

Yeah. I've only really tinkered with Sparrow as opposed to using it as a proper wallet yet (mostly because I see no reason to mess with all my various cold storage wallets which have caused me no issue for many years), but I was pretty impressed with just how easy it was to link it to my node. I've not used Sparrow enough nor examined the code enough to start recommending it like I do with Electrum, but it certainly seems like a strong contender on the privacy front since, as you say, it does away with the need to configure and run an Electrum server.

The only thing so far that I didn't like about Sparrow (or maybe I just couldn't figure out how to do it) was to create a watch only wallet involving individual addresses like you can do on Electrum. It seemed the only way to create a watch only wallet on Sparrow was via an xpub or similar, and therefore impossible to have addresses from different wallets in the same watch only wallet.

That's a pretty good idea for small amounts of change, but I don't like sending large amounts through lightning.


That's one of the things I like most about Sparrow.  If you have an unpruned core running, you don't need an SPV server at all.   Sparrow can connect it directly to core, no need to set up additional software or jeopardize your privacy.

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Given how simple it is to set some of the "one-click" node operating systems out there, everyone who care's about his privacy should be doing it.  I played with Umbrel over Debian for a while, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to use and by the number of available options.

I did get a bit disillusioned with Umbrel while I was traveling not long ago, but that's more an issue of me (and my servers) living behind CGNAT.  I normally don't need to SSH into my servers from outside my house, but I figured it'd be better to have the ability just in case.  Rather than teach myself to set up a personal VPN on a private cloud server, I chose to use Tailscale and since it was so easy to set it up through Umbrel, that's what I did.  Normally I would shy away from a centralized service like Tailscale, but I was short on time preparing for my trip.  While I was away Docker and Umbrel released updates which broke my server, and since tailscale was running in a docker container I couldn't SSH into the confounded thing.  Had I installed Tailscale through the Debian package manager I wouldn't have had that issue...  Live and learn.  Luckily it wasn't enough to ruin the trip, I do have a backup server because that's how I roll.

Running your own infrastructure is the only way you'll be able to guarantee privacy. You don't have too worry about security so much, since everything on the network has to sort of conform to the security protocols put in place, however privacy on the other hand could potentially be compromised at several points in the process.

However, whether it's worth running your own node really begs the question on who or what don't you want your personal identifiable information reaching? If it's the government, it's likely a wasted effort. If you just want to follow good practices, and reduce the chances of multiple parties gaining this information, then sure get your own node up.

There's is an additional convenience compromise when you decide to run your own node, and only connect to that node though. That's including, and not limited too the maintenance of that. Sometimes you can run into problems with your own hardware, failing hard drives etc. Somewhat rare though, the other problem is you're then solely relying on the internet connection of where your node is connected, and the initial cost of setting it up. Since the Blockchain isn't small, and you'll likely want a full copy of it rather than a partial node; it'll be rather expensive to get that equipment if you haven't already got it.

Run your own full node behind TOR, run your own electrum sever behind TOR, only connect to your own node.

With the availability of all the pre-configured setups it's no longer that difficult. And with the supply chain shortages and such no longer causing stupid high prices in more parts of the world it's no longer a large expense.

A $100 machine with a 1TB HD and you can run umbrel as a stand alone or as a VM, or mynode as a VM and it's all behind TOR and you don't have to trust anyone.

You can do what you have to do with a tor enabled web browser or with a light wallet and never have to worry about who sees what.
If someone or some government is looking that closely at you it really does not matter what you are doing.

As for linking wallets, just use coin control. Or joinmarket.

-Dave

I don't know what British Virgin Islands has to do with privacy, since Coinomi is closed source, doesn't have built in Tor support, and it uses centralized third parties for exchanging coins.
Nobody asked for multicoin wallets here, but  I think Unstoppable.money wallet is much better for that purpose and it has Tor support with exchange.

PS
Please STOP spamming other topics with Coinomi promotion!

So you get absolutely zero privacy from Coinomi since everything goes through their servers. They are also closed source and previously were caught sending seed phrases to Google servers. All round a terrible a choice of wallet which provides zero privacy at all.

Which, given that it is a light wallet, depends on someone else's node, so is not fully private. If you are interested in privacy, the only wallets you should be running for either Bitcoin or Monero are full node wallets or light wallets which connect exclusively to your own full node.

If you want to use Bitcoin with more privacy, use Bitcoin + multi altcoin Coinomi desktop wallet from British Virgin Islands - www.coinomi.com - they use their own servers and have only network fees. Plus they have built in exchange and debit card support for crypto buying. Or if you want 100% privacy, use Monero altcoin desktop wallet with stealth receiving addresses - http://featherwallet.org 

You can run Trezor through Tor.  You can even run it in fully Trustless mode by not relying on Trezor's servers and downloading and running your own instead.

Ledger currently has no Tor option as far as I know, unless you are running it in Whonix and doing the Tor part yourself.  Even then, I would not trust them because it is not fully Open Source.

My top suggestion is still the first.  Open Source hardware, Open Source software, no Third Parties.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

You are most likely talking about steganography, which is a practice of hiding the fact that you are hiding something. CoinJoin transactions and centralized mixing services have a certain fingerprint: it is sometimes very easy to tell common transactions from "special" ones aimed at obfuscation of transaction source and destination. Steganography is the opposite of that: it makes all transactions look similar; it is a great tool that helps you get lost in the crowd: among 'normal' people who don't care their privacy is being infringed. How do you hide the fact that you're interested in preserving your confidentiality? The answer is swaps. CoinSwaps, Monero swaps, different kinds of swaps, where you exchange your history with people you don't know. In the blockchain, a swap appears like a regular transaction, usually like a self-transfer, but it almost always involves changing ownership over particular coins.

Another option is to use RoboSats to swap on chain bitcoin for Lightning bitcoin, or vice versa.

Alternatively, if you are running your own node anyway, then you can interact with your hardware wallet via either Electrum or Sparrow which is pointed at your own node or Electrum server to maintain privacy.

Ledger Live doesn't have a TOR on/off switch integrated into the app, but there is a way to take advantage of TOR features with Ledger Live as well. You can run your own Bitcoin onion node and connect that with your Ledger Live client. To do that, you are going to need a software called SatStack. The idea is to not connect to Ledger servers and the explorers they use.

Read this article for more information if you are interested:
https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/5989580852125-Don-t-doxx-your-UTXOs?docs=true

SatStack GitHub page:
https://github.com/LedgerHQ/satstack/releases/tag/v0.17.0

Setup instructions:
https://github.com/LedgerHQ/satstack#manual-setup-for-advanced-users

None of that matters.  I think you're overvaluing the method by which you connect to servers, hoping that your method of connecting is helping you remain private and secure.  It's not.

For example; if you are always changing your IP through Tor or VPN, but always connect to the same server, that server operator knows it's the same wallet connecting every time despite the different IP addresses.  Connecting to different public SPV servers every time only distributes your transactions to more server operators, increasing the potential that someone will use the data to target you.  There's no method of connecting to a public server that will guaranty your privacy.

Realistically, the only way to privately use a wallet that needs an SPV server connection is to run your own server.  Electrum Personal Server is easy to use, very light, and will provide you the privacy you seek.



That could help, but it seems like a lot of trouble.  It would be much easier to just use Bitcoin Core as your main wallet, and effectively achieve the same results.  Core doesn't need to connect to SPV servers, and if you use each address only once then you're taking full advantage of Bitcoin's inherent privacy features.



Not that I know of, but you could use a P2P exchange to trade your bitcoin for bitcoin with a different transaction history.  Personally, I use Bisq to do just that.  I trade my bitcoin for Monero, then trade that Monero for someone else's bitcoin, effectively breaking the traceability of my transactions by replacing them with someone else's transactions.



I can only speak about Electrum, Sparrow, and Trezor Suite since they're the only ones I've used extensively.  All will allow Tor connections, but you need Tor running as a service.  If you have the Tor Projects browser installed it'll run Tor as a service while the browser is running, but it shuts down the Tor background service as soon as you close all the browser windows.  Tor Project's website has instructions on how to run Tor as a background service for Windows and Linux.  It's a very light daemon, and uses very few resources, so there's no reason not to have it running by default as soon as the computer boots up.

Good luck.

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Thank you all very much for your answers, lots of food for thought.  Good stuff. 

If I think of other related issues, I'll pass them along.

There's obviously not a direct, straight answer to this, because each individual can recognize mixed coins in different manner. What might be mixed might not look mixed, and what might not be mixed might look mixed. A coinjoin is definitely going to look mixed, because there are like hundreds of inputs, which create hundreds of outputs. Reputable mixers are going to give you seemingly mixed coins as well.

Why do you want that? The point of mixing coins is to have them looking mixed. It's not to look you're the owner of someone else's coins. It's to just obfuscate.

I've seen few member suggest using mixer or coinjoin which doesn't create specific output amount and only involve few participant (for coinjoin). But i don't know whether if you can actually deceive blockchain analysis service with such method.


AFAIK "hop" means creating multiple transaction which has chain shape.

From your questions you seem to want to avoid getting your transactions / addresses get linked together.

And then for this point I will add that SPV wallets (like Electrum or like Ledger Live) will most probably help others link your addresses together, since they ask from their server the history/latest transactions for many addresses of your wallet.

So imho a good approach for your privacy is to have your own Bitcoin node (and for your HW it's not that hard to install an Electrum server on top of that for local use, and use Electrum wih your HW and your local server).

1. Is likely an "it depends" relayed by used to be something that was easy to track when the network was smaller. Nowadays I don't think it is - it's likely a bunch of miners/pools get most of these requests. Also, from the UK my connection to Germany and Ireland is of similar round trip time to that of Singapore and Japan (~80ms).

2. It might do something if you enable location moving or autoconnect, but there's a good chance it'll do nothing too. There's also a chance you'll make yourself more traceable if you're not using tor (which generally selects "random" routes)

3. Hardware wallets did well to teach me you don't need 10 different nmemonics for 10 different wallets you can either utilise different nmemonic extensions or different derivation paths to generate different wallets. Remembering what each are for might be hard (especially if there's 10 or more) but you can put a lot of hints in the wallet file name and potentially add descriptions (such as labelling the first address in electrum).

4. Afaik coinjoin is meant to make it look like your coins haven't been mixed. The downside to using it is that the other person or people in the join might've mixed their funds before the transfer was done. There's ways to break the chain thoggh (such as by using bisq to convert to an altcoin and then convert it back later on on a different non kyc exchange). There are likely mixers out there that don't look like mixers too, bitmixer.io used to handle their withdrawals like an exchange did so they were really hard to track without having someone determined enough.

5. I have a trezor and connect trezor suite through tør and it works fine. I don't know about ledger but I assume it works the same - both of those hardware wallets can run through electrum too where they can also be used over tor. (I don't remember is electrum has onion nodes or if you're just meant to use the proxy settings for tor though - I used to run tor browser and proxy through that, it's easier to set up than it sounds).

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Please forgive n00bishness of these questions, but I (and perhaps others) would appreciate knowing more.  Please also excuse me if my terminology is incorrect, but I believe the point of each question is clear enough.  I ask these as a non-tech person, seeking to enhance my privacy in an easy as possible way.  I am not in a position to run my own node for example.  Even SparrowWallet looks daunting (ie their coinjoin feature), as do the websites offering coinjoin services.

1)  I have read here at BTCTalk that public servers (when transmitting BTC) can read entire wallet histories, thereby lowering privacy.  If I use a VPN and/or TOR, would the first public server node likely be in "my area" (if I connect my VPN to Singapore and I'm actually in Spain for example)?

2)  Similarly to above, if I run another transaction later that day, is it likely that that second tx be picked up by that same public server?  Or better to switch the VPN exit to Malaysia?

3)  If the above does NOT help my privacy much, perhaps storing BTC quietly in various wallets (seeds + passwords) help?  My issue here is that I want to be able to conveniently remember where all my BTC is without having to remember 10 wallets (w/ seeds and passwords).

And for that matter...:

4)  Is there any way to coinjoin/mix/whatever so that the output does NOT LOOK tumbled?  Or run each UTXO afterwards through various further transactions (hops?) to hide the trail?  Does that term "hop" mean a transaction that just moves those BTC a bit further along?

5)  Do the desktop hardware wallet apps for Ledger, Trezor, BitBox, etc. (also the desktop hot wallet apps) run through TOR (if I am running TOR on my desktop, or even running Brave)?  I have not been able to dig up that info myself.  Is running TOR when using these apps even worthwhile, or is a VPN good enough?

Thank you for your comments!