Topic: Suggestion to improve privacy on Bitcointalk (Read 453 times)

I don't think making it to be private will have more pros than cons because it will lead to more abuse and hard for the alt account hunters to find them so one who is concerned about privacy should not use their primary wallet for signature campaign rewards, myself use Electrum wallet to receive it and to my most of my knowledge I never used this address for other transactions.

Allowing a private sheet would pose greater risk than the benefits. If the bounty or campaign manager is one of those handful highly reputable ones, then sure, they're "entitled" for the option to make the sheet private to protect their participant's privacy, as they're most likely had carefully handpicked these participants and strictly monitoring their participants activities and/or enrollment, thus the possibility of abuse is somewhat minimal.

But if same rules applied by a less dedicated manager who sweep through the weekly report half heartedly, it won't be good. Not only these manager could facilitate multi-acc enrollment, which happens too frequently that several members dedicate their time to purge these spammers/cheaters --and they usually need those addresses to weed these abusers out-- but there's also instances where campaign was abused by their own manager which was detected and exposed because the spreadsheet is availabe for public

I also doubt there would be a significant change about how things have been here. That particular post does not really demand for a change. There is really no serious reason to implement something different.

But spreadsheets could indeed provide vital pieces of information as to how much Bitcoin one owns. One would know, for instance, whether a campaign participant is spending his/her salary or not, or if he/she is regularly moving his/her coins to a main wallet, and how much is already in there. Although it is highly recommended for security's sake to use an address only once, I doubt there is a signature campaign participant here who practices that. And if the account here has mentioned his/her email or social media accounts at one point, the risk grows higher.

I was also thinking that in the unlikely event that certain users here are investigated by whatever law enforcement agencies, for promoting a mixer seized by the government for example, spreadsheets are indeed a good source of incriminating information.

It's been this way ever since and a simple post like that will not change the way majority of bounty managers manage their spreadsheets although there are pros and cons in having our addresses exposes but based on that post the guy who investigated his earnings from his post cannot only rely on the spreadsheets and his Bitcoin address but he can also rely on the time that he is into the campaign, like the guy who just accepted in a campaign that pays him $60 per week and he is there for 10 weeks of course that's $600.
He can still do an investigation even without him checking the spreadsheet, the guy who investigated just made an easy calculation with the presence of the spreadsheet.

I'm not sure if you have misunderstood the post that you've shared or what, but it has nothing to do with the payout or Bitcoin address of the OP of that post and the guy has only provided an estimate of the post count and the total payment he should have received from the signature campaign he has been working for.

The guy  was simply trying to say that he probably has multiple accounts since if he had only one account which would earn him not more than $150 for the three weeks and he created a thread claiming that he bought his dream mobile with his signature campaign earnings.

Lol crazy detective work but either way, one way or another someone would know if you are accepted into a signature or not if you post more regularly and still wear that sig, and making the spreadsheets hidden wouldn't solve this privacy concern.

Btw our detective didn't do his job right, OP clearly said this device was bought preowned and jumped to conclusion that the OP had spent 400 dollars on that device when in fact not.

One element of cryptocurrencies is transparency, if we need something open it will be open, if it needs to be hidden it will be hidden.
Btw if we lean towards hiding all these transactions, in the long run, this will invite multi accounts to join such campaigns and people with the skills to analyze these transaction connections won't be able to as they don't have the access to these spreadsheets which is a no go area atm unless if campaign harbors the top guys of the forum it could be acceptable .

Well, transparency is one feature of the blockchain. It's a public ledger, after all. Everybody can confirm certain information there. As far as users' payout addresses are concerned, they're public addresses. But if these addresses could be linked to accounts here which, in turn, could contain clues or information leading to his/her identity and whereabouts, I guess it may indeed pose a certain danger.

Spreadsheets could remain public, but perhaps campaign managers could at least provide participants the option whether to publish their addresses on the spreadsheet or not.

I totally agree, anyone can easily keep track of all the signature campaigns I participated in, how many weeks you wore signature and how much bitcoins was sent to my address after accessing the google spreadsheet on the campaign thread. One of the campaigns I was involved in stopped using google sheets and opted for Cryptpad sheet and I think is a good choice.

Yes, making the payout addresses, emails, and Telegram accounts private would be a good thing to maintain the privacy of the participants, and you can just make the spreadsheet contain the usernames of the participants, the number of their weekly posts, the manager’s notes, the start dates of the week, and so on, spammers and scammers prefer to have a public spreadsheet like any campaign spreadsheet to send malicious messages to the participants, and through the addresses of the participants’ wallets, they can see their balances inside the wallet and try to target them, so managers need to implement this matter ASAP Because frankly, I do not see that this information that I mentioned should be public to everyone, only it must be visible to the campaign manager, and he is the only one who can view it in order to make the payments.

It's up to the user to keep use unique addresses to preserve their privacy. Using a unique address is important not just for signature campaigns but when using Bitcoin to receive at any point. On the note of signature campaigns, I still wonder why google spreadsheets are being used. This is a completely privacy redundant move and there are much more privacy-friendly alternatives out there for spreadsheets.

The OP is only making suggestions, and whether we agree or disagree, he has the right to ask or speak up about what he/she sees as an improvement to the forum, and what he suggested is exactly what Royce777 has already implemented, which is a good idea, payout BTC addresses and spreadsheets are not supposed to be visible to non-participants. Some of our BTC addresses are linked to our real-life identities; if we value BTC so much, privacy is essential. i see only positive impact and I'm sure other managers will not have reasons to not implement it.


That being said, I hope the emails collected are not associated with their account; I would advise anyone applying to use a random or disposable email address.

The link you have mentioned is the proof of everything is transparent on blockchain. I find no bad thing thing that person mentioned but only the true facts. Because ingoing and outgoing transactions are the main details we can see using explorers and once we find someone's wallet address we can easily find all the connected wallets to that single founded wallet whenever the transaction will be linked between them.

Secondly, the idea of hiding spreadsheet is admirable but i think there is not bad if someone can see how much money is going in and out until they know the exact you. Like wallet address are generated by different wallet with different protocols so that intruder can not eavesdrop the activity or ID of original person behind that wallet. I have a recommendation for you, never connect your social accounts with your BTT profile but bounty hunters have no option so they linked them. Because information of someone's wallet address is of no use to non-technical person while a personal with traditional mindset can easily identity and even locate you based on your social media activities. Idea of giving access to spreadsheet only to participant is excellence as others have to take permission first which is great i think.

let me share you how i found a person using his wallet address and i am not a technical person even. Accidently my payout was transacted to someone's account which i do not know whose fault was because from my end i gave the right wallet address. Well, i copied the other person's address and checked on explorer (respected blockchain explorer) to get idea of his wallet's money. and there was around $10k in them all transactions were in no a single transaction were going out. Well, then i searched the wallet address on google and found a twitter linked to that wallet and from there i tries to contact that person, in hope of getting my money back but he was inactive (maybe he ignored me).

I mean yeah, but for years most of the Bitcoin addresses were public on signature campaigns and it also helps to catch multi accounts on the signature campaign, Yes if you don't want to put your Bitcoin address on the public that depends on you, I mean most of it was recorded on the blockchain, you could maybe ask the campaign manager about that I think it wouldn't be an issue because privacy was a thing here.

I've joined Royse777 signature campaign and here doing something new on the spreadsheet if that's what you concern about, only participants would be able to view the spreadsheet anymore. I guess it was just a matter of convenience since managers want to publicize the spreadsheet so that all participants could see it also they could manage the payment easily if they put all of that addresses. Bitcoin addresses can be public because it's not really a big deal I suppose I mean for the past years it's normal, but sure If you want extra privacy.

Just like what "Loyce Mobile & Little Mouse" have earlier said about any member who is more concerned about his/her privacy to tell his campaign manager to exclude his wallet address on the spreadsheet, for me I will gladly say that that's the reason why "Bitcoin Mixers" where created, so that for anyone who is more concern about privacy can as well swap his Campaign weekly earning into a totally untraceable Bitcoin wallet address with the help of the use of some popular reputable mixers on the forum such as  "Sinbad" & "Whirlwind" for more privacy, and stop worrying about anybody being able to trace his net worth through his campaign wallet address. Very simple.

for those who object to privacy concerns, the new method you have shown might be helpful. this is also implemented by several bounty managers who only share spreadsheet access with their campaign participants.
but we can also see those who don't care about such tracking. especially those who often carry out transactional activities with members of other forums. even put their Bitcoin and Altcoin addresses in the account profile.
if you want to implement it, that's fine. but for those who have been on the forum for a while, I don't think it protects anything. All post data has been archived. including how many addresses we used to sign up for the campaign.

Using Google Forms for campaigns is not a good idea. Despite its convenience, it poses a significant risk to privacy and security and not everyone may be comfortable with sharing their personal information to a third-party platform. For instance, I only own one Google account, and it's connected to my real identity and phone number. I would not be comfortable disclosing this information to anyone just to participate in a bounty campaign.

For me i would love every details of the participants to be private than being public for everyone to see it, if any participants has any complaint they may send a private message to the campaign manager to check their details if is correct or not and should stop exposing users identity. Maybe for btc paying campaign the manager may create a google form just as people do apply on during bounty campaign
with the usual application formats on the google form, anyone who qualifies will may get a PM from the bounty manager.
I think this can be considerable by managers i don't know if others already suggested it.

Yeah, for privacy matters, it's a yes. Reputable managers should better to do that, but should not be required them to do so.
For new managers, i guess they won't do that, and most probably will post the transaction id for transparency purposes to the public.
But just like what everybody said, it all depends on the managers preference.

It is good your idea and based on your citation as regards a member making critique of a posters payment, I think it is because of the openness to access such on this forum hence his comment. You would not blame him because there is always an open floor for criticism so as to make amends anyways.

Making a spreadsheet public somehow is a kind of raising eyes in campaigns and their management. It is not new campaign managers do make their escrow wallet public so that participants would see it for credibility and transparency which is a good thing likewise the details of the applicants to be made public for possible observations too if anyone made a mistake or maybe the details submitted is(are) wrong so they could be called or they call the attention of the campaign manager for necessary actions and corrections but it seems some members now take it as an avenue to scrutinize people's wallet just as the other guy did.

I think that as long as members here are anonymous, it is enough reason that some details such as wallet address submitted for a campaign to manager should be private likewise the spreadsheet and can only be accessed through what ever means the campaign manager deemed fit.

@OP your reaction is too much about this matter, I see the opinion of the user you mentioned above is fair since he just to prove if Maxre is a liar. Do you think that user will trying to get more information and other thing in order to steal the phone which Maxre own? that's too far.

If you want to prevent anyone to know your location, your wealth etc, you're too late. The forum already know your IP address, you've create a new account on online casino, etc. I aware we can use Tor to access this forum through the special code link, but you need to wait until 6 years long until your real location completely changed.

Anyway no one can prove if the administrator never save our IP address, just saying.

What is malicious intent?

I would answer it depends on manager and participants.

Managers have their own ways to keep their campaign spreadsheet publicly or privately. They can use Google sheet (public or private) or use Cryptpad sheet. However, managers are not responsible to protect privacy of their campaign participants. Even if you send the manager your receiving address in personal message, the manager account can be hacked and those personal messages will be leaked.

Participants are responsible to take care of their privacy. They can choose to join or not join any campaign if they are seriously about their privacy. Even with public spreadsheet, they can take care of their received payments and how they will use those coins after that.

There are for sure pros and cons to revealing Bitcoin addresses during signature campaigns. I won't say that signature campaigns mangers should change that to keep members' BTC addresses private, as it should be a personal choice for privacy. Personally, I prefer not to share information about my addresses or how much BTC I have in them. However, exposing alt accounts should be left to the campaign manager, who can catch cheaters and ensure a fair campaign. Even if an address is exposed, people can still change it after a while or use a mixer to send their BTC to a new address for added privacy

If a forum member have more privacy or the current level of privacy have leveled up then it will be hard to find campaign cheaters and it will become much harder to determine an alt account or second account in the campaign. The forum member in the post you mentioned didn't think that the owner of the address may have paid in BTC for the remaining amount and ask to the person where he bought the phone that he will pay the remaining amount in fiat currency or other cryptocurrency. The op in that thread showed that he paid in USDT which is $150 and we know that if you convert your BTC to USDT then the value won't be the same as before (-transaction fee or exchange fee). Why don't we ask how did he pay the remaining $250 and what did he use to pay then I think he will take back what he said "the story somehow look weird to me". As long as no information about yourself is linked to your wallet address then it's okay if you ask me.

Personally I don't expect all campaign managers to agree on this, firstly they have their own management policies and secondly you have to decide which campaign benefit you in privacy. You can expect Royse777 or a few others to agree with this idea, but you can't force other people to agree.

If it's about privacy, I think there are always ways to protect your privacy even if you post your address publicly to receive payments. Use mixer service or something, that's what I'm thinking right now.

This is a good idea, but I think the method is really helpful in phishing out members that cheat in signature campaigns with their altcoins, unless there is another way to really phish out those members, and I hope the method can stand as concrete evidence against the victim.

 Others may disagree, but I am of the opinion that the wallets or spreadsheets should be kept public. Whoever wants more privacy can use any of the Bitcoin mixers in the forum to mix their bitcoin after receiving a signature, which allows them to send the bitcoin to an address that no one in the forum knows belongs to them. just my opinion.

Second opinion, forum members who have built a good reputation in the forum can send their address directly to the campaign manager via DM, asking him or her to keep their wallet private off the spreadsheet.

It is infuriating when someone goes to great lengths to obtain public information about you, particularly your financial situation.
But I believe the OP of the post you refer to intended it that way because he exposes himself and allows people to go to extreme measures to obtain his total earnings via his wallet address because we all know the information is public.


It would have been preferable if it had been made private for security reasons, but I believe the campaign managers will also require proof of payment to make their work transparent and avoid false accusations of nonpayment by any of their campaign members.

However, as other members have stated, some managers will pay you privately if you request it, while others will not.

For this particular case it doesn't matter, though?

Mr. Detective didn't actually need to check the address on-chain. We all know how much MixTum pays because this is public on their campaign's thread, so anyone can assume how much he earned.

Anyways:

Usually it should be so but you know.. if a manager starts hiding sheet from the public they would say he or she has added his alt account in the campaign that was why they hide sheet so the general public won't see them to know how they are operating and managing the campaign. So if any manager decided to hide it should be after accepting everyone and they checked their names and addresses are very correct then sheet can be hidden from the general public after which he may instructs all participants to go edit and remove their addresses or they should pm their address to the manager for him to manually input them to the sheets.

Alternatively the manager may share only to the participants, meaning anyone who is not promoting that campaign may not have access to it all less they are one of the participants. That is my opinion maybe lets hear from the campaign managers on their own view concerning this issues.

It really depends on the situation. For instance, when repaying a loan, it may be required to provide proof of payment. In the realm of cryptocurrency, verifiable transactions hold significant value as the blockchain technology operates with a level of transparency and integrity that humans cannot match.

Regarding the post you mentioned, nobody requested the OP to share his financial details publicly. It was his personal choice to do so.


That's not what I meant. Even if the campaign manager is not taking action, it's important for the wider community to have proof of how the campaign is being run. If there is evidence of a large number of interconnected accounts and addresses, it shows that the campaign is not as legitimate as it may seem, and is using a farm of fake accounts to create the false impression of a large following.

In my opinion, it's possible that other scam platforms could follow a similar pattern and create fake signature campaigns by hiring fake accounts to make it seem like their promotional efforts are legitimate. That's why I think it's important for campaign payments to be transparent and public.

Why contacting the manager when you can use Tor to connect to this forum. If you do not want Tor, I do not think VPN is bad. If he does not like campaigns that the payment is public, he can join Stake. You can be on this forum without anyone knowing your identity.

Keeping user payout addresses for privacy concerns will not be helpful. In the blockchain all transactions are recorded, and can be viewed by anyone. Even if the campaign manager keeps the payout addresses private, the problem is still not solved. During the payout cycle, all members of the signature campaign will receive Bitcoin from the campaign manager. Each member of the campaign who receives Bitcoin will be able to see what others have received. Although this approach is better than sharing the address on the forum, it still does not provide complete privacy.

I'm not sure this new system will be adopted by many managers, but I agree about the need for financial privacy. System changes also have to be integrated with some other efforts so as not to give lot of opportunities for anyone who plans to do harm, I mean access to spreadsheets can also be given to anyone who is approved by the manager although it requires special permission.

But anyway, I agree this thread is moved to services discussion.

Yeah I think I saw that campaign by Royse777. Like LoyceV said, it will be obvious if you’re the only whose address is omitted on the spreadsheet.


I don’t think it’s necessary to publish one’s transaction address publicly, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

I understand that bounty cheaters will want to abuse such system. As for accounts promoting 1xbit, they are already tag dubious users including the CM, and I doubt the CM even cares about those cheating in the campaign.

You can hardly call it 'going to extremes'. The blockchain is public data, so if you publish your transaction or address publicly, you can expect that someone will verify it. I don't see any problem with that. In fact, it can even be seen as a good practice to verify the authenticity of the transaction or someone's claims. However, it's true that malicious individuals could potentially misuse that information. SO, it's good to be cautious and take appropriate measures to protect your privacy.


No, this measure wouldn't protect your privacy at all, but it would rather benefit scammers who seek to manipulate the system using multiple accounts, such as those involved in promoting the 1xbit scam. If the address was not publicly disclosed, they would likely never have been caught.

I don't think it's a crime they just want to know about the bitcoin address and check it, but when it comes to identity then it can't be public and we have to be private, but when other people act on bitcoin addresses it's not a big deal.

It depends on the manager, they have their own policies, some prefer public spreadsheets, and some are closed, but on average campaigns and spreadsheets are public, if someone doesn't abuse it, it's not a problem for him.

Not all maintainers will accept this suggestion.

Bitcoin doesn't have that level of privacy, you can still be seen by others until you prevent them from seeing your transaction. Keeping your wallet address on your profile page is also important for two reasons; 1. Besides most authentication requests, for the wallet address provided in the campaign for managers, for cases where your name is impersonated. 2.The forum moderators will also ask for a signature for the provided account on your profile page in case of an account hack, so you need to have this wallet address public. Anyone who takes it as their job to check other people's addresses has a problem.

They could follow the trail of transactions and maybe discover related accounts of the user. They now have a string of addresses and have a pseudo identity linked to it. That's a lot of information, but it cannot really be used for much beyond this. You can be sent personalized scam attempts based on actions you take.
If the user erroneously reveals their real identity, they can be attacked cause it's public knowledge the amount of bitcoins they own, or as much of it that is public.

The idea by Royse777 to have the spreadsheet only visible to those who are participating in the campaign is good for privacy. Fellow participants likely can access the information, but that's a small number compared to ayonf who can click on bitcointalk.org.

Royse777 (more promotion) has started this practice for his last 2 campaigns if I'm correct. Well, if you are so concerned, you can ask campaign manager to do this. It's not something that depends on our decision. It's individual or the campaign manager who can decide. If you think it's breaking your privacy, you should stay away from participating such campaigns.

This is actually not Bitcointalk Meta related. The Bitcointalk forum itself has nothing to do with signature campaigns. They are not endorsed nor does theymos have anything to do with the campaigns offered.

If you want to address the issue, better move this thread to the Service Discussion section and/or contact the respective bounty managers responsible for their signature campaigns.

I'd say "it depends". Both have pros and cons, for instance when there's a dispute about a payment. If you want extra privacy, you could always ask your campaign manager to keep your address out if the spreadsheet. But if you're the only one, it doesn't take a genius to figure out which address belongs to you.
Public payment details can also be helpful to compare rates.

I was browsing the forum yesterday when I found this post, it struck me because he went to the extreme to check the OP’s signature address on the blockchain. I wonder what others with malicious intent could do with that information.

I think it will be good if campaign managers change the application format to keep users payout addresses private so there is no link between forum usernames and addresses. I know the public spreadsheets help expose alt accounts and bounty cheaters, and for this reason some members may prefer the system stay the same but I believe making the change. I’ve seen only one campaign already doing this, what do you guys think? Should spreadsheets and payout addresses be kept private?