4 ms·

It's a bit more nuanced isn't it (or am I mistaken)? All you see in the ledgers is the (hopefully single use) addresses the money is sent to, plus all addresses

by icoder 5y ago

It's a bit more nuanced isn't it (or am I mistaken)? All you see in the ledgers is the (hopefully single use) addresses the money is sent to, plus all addresses that come after it. There's not much in the system itself that links people / organisations to addresses, right? You'll have to get that information from outside the system: you know yourself, and maybe the receiver as a person, but where it then ends up requires you to obtain knowledge that's not readily available. Sure there's a lot stored, which does bring privacy concerns that are quite different from our current financial system, I'm not debating that, but it's not as obvious as you put it, as far as I understood it.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
"We've killed people based on metadata" - Former USA CIA director. [1] It really isn't that nuanced at all for Bitcoin. If I know your wallet I can see all of your transactions. Period. And if you want to trade money with me, you need to give me your wallet. Once I find it, thought, it is game over. [2] There are "tumblers" that attempt to obfuscate the chain by turning one transaction into millions of little ones, but it is just a matter of tree search to reconstruct. [1] https://www.rt.com/usa/158460-cia-director-metadata-kill-people/ https://www.rt.com/usa/158460-cia-director-metadata-kill-peo... [2] https://www.blockchain.com/explorer https://www.blockchain.com/explorer
acdha 5y ago
The problem is that it's global and irrevocable: mistakes and intentional linkages act as a ratchet increasingly deanonymizing the network over time. If it started to have real usage, you'd quickly see the equivalent of the credit card / scoring companies, Google, etc. paying merchants for transaction details and building a web of user information.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Ooof. That is a great second-order observation: agencies profiling you and making lifer harder or easier based on your blockchain history. Not like this is new, as you point out, just even more difficult to expunge: there's no "blockchain" to expunge your blockchain habits! (yet??? I think I have a new startup idea for blockchain ... /bangsheadagainstwall/)
  - acdha 5y ago
    Sadly, these days my threat model for anything new is basically “how will Google/Facebook use this for ad targeting?” — it's good for both a realistic level of risk (most of us are not targeted by the CIA/Mossad/FSB) and a sober assessment of the level of resources available to the attacker. For blockchains in particular I think we tend underestimate the amount of information which someone with that kind of analytic capacity could derive, especially if they also have other data sources — for example, I would be quite surprised if the various anonymity schemes are less effective when evaluated as part of a full system against someone who has a lot of visibility into web activity (Google Analytics, Facebook beacons), DNS, email, etc.

by icoder 5y ago

SavantIdiot 5y ago

"We've killed people based on metadata" - Former USA CIA director. [1] It really isn't that nuanced at all for Bitcoin. If I know your wallet I can see all of your transactions. Period. And if you want to trade money with me, you need to give me your wallet. Once I find it, thought, it is game over. [2] There are "tumblers" that attempt to obfuscate the chain by turning one transaction into millions of little ones, but it is just a matter of tree search to reconstruct. [1] https://www.rt.com/usa/158460-cia-director-metadata-kill-people/ https://www.rt.com/usa/158460-cia-director-metadata-kill-peo... [2] https://www.blockchain.com/explorer https://www.blockchain.com/explorer

acdha 5y ago

The problem is that it's global and irrevocable: mistakes and intentional linkages act as a ratchet increasingly deanonymizing the network over time. If it started to have real usage, you'd quickly see the equivalent of the credit card / scoring companies, Google, etc. paying merchants for transaction details and building a web of user information.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
Ooof. That is a great second-order observation: agencies profiling you and making lifer harder or easier based on your blockchain history. Not like this is new, as you point out, just even more difficult to expunge: there's no "blockchain" to expunge your blockchain habits! (yet??? I think I have a new startup idea for blockchain ... /bangsheadagainstwall/)
- acdha 5y ago
  Sadly, these days my threat model for anything new is basically “how will Google/Facebook use this for ad targeting?” — it's good for both a realistic level of risk (most of us are not targeted by the CIA/Mossad/FSB) and a sober assessment of the level of resources available to the attacker. For blockchains in particular I think we tend underestimate the amount of information which someone with that kind of analytic capacity could derive, especially if they also have other data sources — for example, I would be quite surprised if the various anonymity schemes are less effective when evaluated as part of a full system against someone who has a lot of visibility into web activity (Google Analytics, Facebook beacons), DNS, email, etc.