Bitcoin Anonymity - Is Bitcoin Anonymous?
Bitcoin is often described as an anonymous currency because it is possible to send and receive bitcoins without giving any personally identifying information. However, achieving reasonable anonymity with Bitcoin can be quite complicated and perfect anonymity may be impossible.
Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Sending and receiving bitcoins is like writing under a pseudonym. If an author’s pseudonym is ever linked to their identity, everything they ever wrote under that pseudonym will now be linked to them. In Bitcoin, your pseudonym is the address to which you receive Bitcoin. Every transaction involving that address is stored forever in the blockchain. If your address is ever linked to your identity, every transaction will be linked to you.
In the original Satoshi whitepaper, it was recommended that Bitcoin users use a new address for each transaction to avoid the transactions being linked to a common owner. This would be the equivalent of writing many books under different pseudonyms. Although this remains a best practice, it is not enough to guarantee full anonymity due to multi-input transactions.
Multi-Input Transactions
A multi-input transaction occurs when you receive payments to your wallet to different addresses, but then you send a payment out of your wallet which pulls bitcoins from multiple addresses. The outgoing transaction will include multiple addresses as inputs, proving that they are in the same wallet and belong to the same entity. If your identity is ever linked to any of these addresses, none of the addresses will maintain their anonymity. For example, in the transaction displayed below, some of the bitcoins came from address 12TBGSTqd1how9cpYKWTm4VUYw3QDDWMoB and some came from the address 19t1HyYqe254NxiTAGLrAR4gPJAZCkSXJY. This means that those two addresses are in the same wallet and belong to the same user.
Multiple Wallets
One way to increase your anonymity is to use multiple wallets. This is like maintaining multiple separate identities. The easiest way to maintain multiple wallets is to use MultiBit. MultiBit is a simple and lightweight software wallet for Windows, MacOS, and Linux that allows you to manage multiple wallets from one program.
Mixing Services
A mixing service is an entity that offers to trade out your bitcoins for ones with a different history. To do this, they essential take your bitcoins and put them in a big pot with bitcoins from many other users. They then send back out the bitcoins randomly to make it impossible to tell which inputs connect to which outputs. While this is effective in theory, to do this with complete anonymity generally requires you to trust an anonymous third party to give you back your bitcoins and not keep records of the transactions that flow through them. There is nothing to keep a mixing service from running away with the coins.
eWallets or Online Wallets
Web hosted wallets can be used as an effective way of masking the original owner of bitcoins. Many web-based wallet services will lump the bitcoins in their service together, thus often giving you different bitcoins when you withdraw. This only works if this is an active service with other active withdrawals and if you do not make up a significant portion (less than 10%) of the service’s Bitcoin balance. Most web wallets also maintain records of incoming and outgoing coins, so any anonymity gained is fully dependent upon the service provider.
In this article, we attempted to outline why Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous as well as lay out a few ways to increase your anonymity when using Bitcoin. We are preparing a more advanced guide that explains anonymity methods that are both more complicated and more secure. Sign up for our mailing list or subscribe to our feeds (RSS2/Atom) to know about it before anyone else.
Top 4 Anonymous Bitcoin Wallets
Some bitcoin users would like nothing more than to use a wallet that allows them to remain somewhat anonymous. Unfortunately, the vast majority of mobile wallets do not provide such a functionality at this time. Lucky for those users, there are a few bitcoin wallet projects which focus primarily on anonymity, even though that makes most of them a lot harder to use.
4. Multibit
We briefly touched upon the Multibit wallet in a previous article, as it is a recommended tool for novice bitcoin users . With its decentralized nature and no fixed servers, users can enjoy a degree of anonymity when using this wallet service. Users can also keep private contacts and payments databases. More importantly, Multibit ensures all data is encrypted on the local machine, while also supporting hardware wallets. Plus, it is an open source solution, which allows users to add additional features as they see fit.
The Jaxx wallet has made quite a name for itself throughout 2016. Not only does the wallet support bitcoin, but it is also compatible with a wide range of popular altcoins. Jaxx never holds onto user funds, and their entire security model is client-side. Even if the wallet would ever cease to exist altogether, users can still export their private key with relative ease.
Anonymity is achieved by not asking users for any personal information while signing up for the Jaxx wallet. The company doesn’t even require an email address, which is a nice touch. It is also a very convenient wallet, as users can switch between cryptocurrency balances from the same screen and pair the wallet across devices. All things considered, Jaxx seems to be checking a lot of the right boxes.
One of the more recently released bitcoin wallet solutions goes by the name of Bitlox . It is evident from the get-go this tool is designed to take anonymity to a new level. In fact, some of its features may seem a bit paranoid to users, albeit they can prove to be useful in certain situations. Among its features are tools such as support for 20-character PIN codes and using an emergency PIN to wipe all user data off the device.
As one would have guessed by now, Bitlox is a hardware bitcoin wallet. This means it can be used offline and only requires a connection to a computer to send transactions to the network. Users can generate dozens of wallet addresses for bitcoin transactions, which solves the address reuse problem. As a result, this feature also provides more anonymity. Bitlox is a hardware solution well worth checking out, although it may be a bit too “difficult” for novice users.
1. Samourai Wallet
Samourai Wallet is a rather unique bitcoin wallet projects, as it is designed to keep transactions private and one’s identity masked. Albeit the project is still in the alpha stage right now, their transactional privacy features all seem to be working just fine. Users are even given “micro control” over privacy and miner fees when sending a new transaction.
About The Author
JP Buntinx is a FinTech and Bitcoin enthusiast living in Belgium. His passion for finance and technology made him one of the world's leading freelance Bitcoin writers, and he aims to achieve the same level of respect in the FinTech sector.
Some things you need to know
If you are about to explore Bitcoin, there are a few things you should know. Bitcoin lets you exchange money in a different way than with usual banks. As such, you should take time to inform yourself before using Bitcoin for any serious transaction. Bitcoin should be treated with the same care as your regular wallet, or even more in some cases!
Securing your wallet
Like in real life, your wallet must be secured. Bitcoin makes it possible to transfer value anywhere in a very easy way and it allows you to be in control of your money. Such great features also come with great security concerns. At the same time, Bitcoin can provide very high levels of security if used correctly. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your money. Read more about securing your wallet.
Bitcoin price is volatile
The price of a bitcoin can unpredictably increase or decrease over a short period of time due to its young economy, novel nature, and sometimes illiquid markets. Consequently, keeping your savings with Bitcoin is not recommended at this point. Bitcoin should be seen like a high risk asset, and you should never store money that you cannot afford to lose with Bitcoin. If you receive payments with Bitcoin, many service providers can convert them to your local currency.
Bitcoin payments are irreversible
Any transaction issued with Bitcoin cannot be reversed, they can only be refunded by the person receiving the funds. That means you should take care to do business with people and organizations you know and trust, or who have an established reputation. For their part, businesses need to keep control of the payment requests they are displaying to their customers. Bitcoin can detect typos and usually won't let you send money to an invalid address by mistake. Additional services might exist in the future to provide more choice and protection for the consumer.
Bitcoin is not anonymous
Some effort is required to protect your privacy with Bitcoin. All Bitcoin transactions are stored publicly and permanently on the network, which means anyone can see the balance and transactions of any Bitcoin address. However, the identity of the user behind an address remains unknown until information is revealed during a purchase or in other circumstances. This is one reason why Bitcoin addresses should only be used once. Always remember that it is your responsibility to adopt good practices in order to protect your privacy. Read more about protecting your privacy.
Unconfirmed transactions aren't secure
Transactions don't start out as irreversible. Instead, they get a confirmation score that indicates how hard it is to reverse them (see table). Each confirmation takes between a few seconds and 90 minutes, with 10 minutes being the average. If the transaction pays too low a fee or is otherwise atypical, getting the first confirmation can take much longer.
The Best Fully Anonymous Bitcoin Wallet Options | CoinCentral
Darkwallet, BitLox, Electrum on Tail OS, and Samourai are all good picks.
It's a privacy wallet with the following features: each time you receive bitcoin, the wallet produces a new address to prevent someone tracking your purchase habits. Samourai also notifies you when sending bitcoin to the same address multiple times in order to deter unintentional address re-use. The wallet also includes other common privacy features such as Tor and VPN support, as well as blockchain obfuscation.
BitLox is a bitcoin hardware wallet with a privacy set designed to ensure your anonymity. The hardware is capable of holding over 100 wallets with the ability to create millions of addresses for each wallet. You don’t need to worry about re-using addresses with the seemingly endless amount of wallet and address combinations.
The Best Anonymous Bitcoin Wallets
So, you’ve finally decided to take your bitcoin off an exchange and store it in a wallet. Smart move.
Storing your cryptocurrency in a wallet minimizes the risk of your funds being stolen by hackers who commonly target exchanges for their mischief.
As an extra layer of security, you should also take privacy into consideration when choosing a wallet. Many people equate the desire for privacy. Using an anonymous wallet separates your personal information from your funds preventing anyone from tracking you down to get a slice of that sweet, crypto pie.
Surprisingly, there aren’t many wallets on the market that focus on keeping you anonymous.
In this article, I’m going to outline four of your best options so that you can find one that works best for you.
NOTE: Because Bitcoin is basically a public ledger, there’s no way to stay 100% anonymous. If you’re looking for complete privacy, it’s worth checking out other coins like Monero or Verge.
Samourai is one of the newest anonymous wallets available. Unfortunately, the product is currently just in alpha, and you can only use it if you have an Android phone. For a wallet with a primary focus on privacy, Samourai still has a great design. The interface is simple, and you’re able to perform a good amount of functions via SMS texts.
Each time you receive bitcoin, the wallet produces a new address to prevent someone tracking your purchase habits. Samourai also notifies you when sending bitcoin to the same address multiple times in order to deter unintentional address re-use. The wallet also includes other common privacy features such as Tor and VPN support, as well as blockchain obfuscation.
To expand the anonymity to your phone, Samourai also has a stealth mode. This cool functionality hides the wallet from your home screen, launcher, app list, and recent apps. The only way to have your wallet appear is by calling a secret pin code. That’s some spy-level stuff right there.
Conclusion: If Samourai can deliver on everything they promise, this will easily be one of the best anonymous software wallets. They’ve built several layers of privacy into the product, leaving you with an easy-to-use wallet that doesn’t require additional set-up or plug-ins.
Electrum on Tails OS
Electrum was created in 2011 and is one of the most trusted software wallets in the crypto space.
Several members of the community recommend using this wallet on a Tails operating system (OS) to ensure you remain anonymous. Running this wallet on Tails routes all of your traffic through Tor – an anonymity network that makes it virtually impossible to track your activity.
You don’t need to enter any personal information to set-up an Electrum wallet.
The only feasible way someone could associate you with your transactions and wallet balances is if you broadcast the public addresses that you’re using.
Electrum also generates new addresses for each transaction until you hit the gap limit – set to 20 by default. Once you hit this limit, you’ll still be able to generate new addresses manually by typing a script into the command console. Be careful, though, as any addresses generated beyond the gap limit won’t be automatically recovered from the seed. To recover these, you need to increase the gap limit or create new addresses until the used ones are found.
If you plan to or are already using a hardware wallet, you can use it in conjunction with Electrum. The wallet supports third-party plug-ins for popular hardware wallets as well as multi-signature services.
Conclusion: Electrum is trusted by the community and gives you a high-level of anonymity.
This free wallet is a great option for users who are comfortable running alternative operating systems and using the command line. If those things intimidate you, I recommend using a simpler solution.
BitLox is a bitcoin hardware wallet with a privacy set designed to ensure your anonymity. The hardware is capable of holding over 100 wallets with the ability to create millions of addresses for each wallet. You don’t need to worry about re-using addresses with the seemingly endless amount of wallet and address combinations.
BitLox uses hidden wallets with data that are indistinguishable from random bytes to provide another layer of privacy and give you plausible deniability. The wallet also secures the signatures of your transactions with a NIST certified true random number generator. And, if necessary, you can enter an emergency PIN to wipe all user data from the device.
The Extreme Privacy Set offered by BitLox additionally includes a military-grade USB vault with the Tails OS pre-installed. With this, you can anonymously send and receive funds over the Tor network using their Tor-compatible web tool.
Conclusion : If you’re interested in a secure, private hardware wallet, BitLox is a great option. Although more expensive than its competitors (the Extreme Privacy Set is $198), the product has unique privacy features that the other hardware wallets just don’t include.
Darkwallet
Darkwallet was designed specifically to make your bitcoin use as private as possible. Their website states that the wallet is in its first public beta, but their GitHub page claims that the product is only in alpha. Their GitHub repo also hasn’t had a commit in over a year causing me to believe that this project is dead in the water.
The wallet is only available as a Google Chrome plug-in but includes features such as multisig and escrow support. To keep your transactions as anonymous as possible, Darkwallet uses a combination of stealth payments and CoinJoin compression.
Like most other anonymous wallets, Darkwallet generates a new public address for each transaction that you make.
WARNING: Several users have reported that even though the wallet is operational, it’s full of bugs. On top of that, transactions through Darkwallet often take much longer than normal transactions on the bitcoin network.
Conclusion: I recommend against using Darkwallet. The limited information on their website and inactive GitHub page are cause for concern. The developers even state that “it’s not safe at all to use the wallet.” That’s usually not a good sign.
(Check Out Our Full List of Recommended Bitcoin Wallet and Ethereum Wallet Options)
How anonymous is Bitcoin?
How private is Bitcoin? On the one hand, it is entirely anonymous. On the other, it is completely transparent and trackable. How can that be – and what does it mean for privacy?
Incumbent Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox recently imposed authentication rules on people trading fiat currencies on its network. The rules – which didn't apply to people trading only in bitcoins – require people to verify their identities. There may not be any such requirements on native bitcoin users yet, but it highlights the issue of privacy. Many people using Bitcoin don't want others to know who they are. The question is whether they're able to hide that information.
Bitcoin could be interpreted as a 'pseudo-anonymous' network. It is anonymous in the sense that you can hold a Bitcoin address without revealing anything about your identity in that address. One person could hold multiple addresses, and in theory, there would be nothing to link those addresses together, or to indicate that the person owned them.
So far so good, but there is another side to Bitcoin. Everything that happens in the Bitcoin world is trackable. Thanks to the way that the algorithm is structured, every Bitcoin-based transaction is logged in the blockchain.
This leads to a level of transparency that may surprise some Bitcoin users. "If you publish your Bitcoin address on your website, then everyone in the world will be able to know what your bitcoin balance is," points out Sergio Lerner, CEO of Argentinian company Certimix.
Certimix develops products for protecting online card games sites and their players, using mathematically proven algorithms. Lerner has a strong cryptography background, and has discovered several vulnerabilities in the Satoshi algorithm.
"Privacy is not enforced by the Bitcoin protocol design," he says. "If you re-use the same address over and over to receive money from other users, then every one of them will detect that the others have sent you money."
But surely this isn't a problem. After all, if your name isn't explicitly linked to a Bitcoin address, then it doesn't matter if people know what transactions that address is participating in, right? Wrong, says Matthew Green. Green is an assistant research professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the co-developer of an anonymity system for crypto currencies called Zerocoin.
Interested parties have become very good at inferring information from large network movements, Green says, pointing out that this is pretty much Google's business model. Facebook's, LinkedIn, and pretty much any other social network that laps up big data will be working hard at extracting as much data from that network as possible by looking for patterns.
"With a bit of data mining, my concern is that people will get a lot of information. The things people are doing to protect themselves today are pretty naive compared to the kinds of clever data mining tricks that exist. What I'm worried about is that a lot of people are doing things that are leaving a permanent history and will then inadvertently leave some trace that reveals their actual identity," he says.
Sound far-fetched? Let's not forget Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, who were both researchers at the University of Texas in 2007. They took a dataset, publicly released by Netflix, which contained 10 million movie rankings by 500,000 customers. The online video company was running a competition to see if people could develop a better movie recommendation system by analysing the data set.
There should have been no problem, because the dataset was rendered anonymous, meaning that all personal information pertaining to the movie rankings had been removed.
But the researchers matched rankings and timestamps with information publicly stored in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). It enabled them to find out who certain people were, removing the anonymity from certain parts of the data.
Thelma Arnold, a widow living in the US state of Georgia, probably never searched for "deanonymisation". Nevertheless, the Internet suddenly knew a lot more about her search history in August 2006. She was a frequent AOL search user, and her searches were mixed anonymously into a file with 20 million others and released by AOL for researchers to play with.
By analysing the searches, data scientists were able to figure out who she was (along with the fact that she's interested in single men over 60, and that she'd like some way to stop her dog urinating on everything).
Recombining personal information by analysing large data sets isn't just for sport – it has huge ramifications for law enforcement, intelligence services, and other players. Narayanan calls this branch of research "reidentification". Presumably, the techniques used will vary depending on the data sets involved. But with a completely transparent block chain, bitcoin is a ripe target.
How do paranoid bitcoin users stop this happening? John Hopkins' Green hopes to help with Zerocoin. It effectively builds a money-laundering service into a crypto currency at the protocol level.
"The way we designed it is that you take original bitcoins, you turn them into Zerocoins, and then you turn them back into new bitcoins in another wallet," he says.
The technology is being refined to be more efficient, particularly in the size of mathematical proofs that it needs per transaction. It will be ready for deployment in a couple of weeks, says Green.
But just because researchers built it doesn't mean that Bitcoin users will come. Getting someone to adopt it is perhaps more challenging than the mathematics behind it. It would need to be built into the core protocol, and all of the clients would need to be updated, probably needing a hard fork. The core development team has enough work on its plate.
"The core devs (who have very little resources) are focusing in reducing the complexity and creating a robust application, not adding more features that would need great efforts of testing and validation," protests Lerner.
Green agrees that getting Zerocoin into the Satoshi protocol is a long shot. But hopes that some alternative currencies will take a risk and try to work this into their clients. "Then we would get to test it and see it working. We are hopeful."
Lerner has his own altcurrency, with a built-in anonymity feature, but it isn't using Zerocoin. Qixcoin, which is designed to support online wagering, is anonymous, untraceable, and tradeable with other cryptocurrencies, Currently in beta, it uses Lerner's own anonymity protocol, called APPECoin.
"APPECoin uses special cryptographic constructions to make the size of the proofs much, much smaller, and so it is as scalable as Bitcoin," says Lerner, who hopes to release a technical paper on the project in the next two weeks. "Also, APPECoin completely hides the amounts paid, and coins can be divided and combined privately without disclosing the amounts."
These developments are all very well, but don't help Bitcoin users paranoid about their transactions today. So, what can be done? Lerner has some advice. Changing Bitcoin payment addresses often (or even creating a destination address for each payment) is a healthy thing to do, as is connecting to the Bitcoin network using the Tor anonymity system.
Connecting to the Bitcoin network using two peers in a chain is another worthwhile step, advises Lerner. "The first node holds the private wallet and connect only to the second node," he explains. "The second is the gateway with the remaining nodes of the Bitcoin network."
Another is to use an external mixing service to render your coins anonymous. There are several of these, which don't work at the protocol level. Instead, they simply function as third-party services. One of them, called BitLaundry, works simply.
The sender (Alice) gives the address of the recipient (Bob) to the laundry service (BL). BL gives a one-time address to Alice, to which she sends Bob's bitcoins. BL mixes them into a pool of other bitcoins, and then deletes the database link between the one-time address and Bob's address, before sending the bitcoins to Bob. This happens according to a predefined delivery schedule, making it difficult for any third-party to analyse transaction timestamps.
BitLaundry advises users to send themselves bitcoins, thus obscuring their history, and to use multiple recipient addresses, further obfuscating the transactions.
Until bitcoin includes a protocol-level anonymity system, users interested in true privacy will have to follow a number of workarounds to decrease the probability of detection. If they don't follow the rules, then they should be aware of the consequences. In many ways, Bitcoin is like Vegas: what happens in the blockchain stays in the blockchain.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.
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Anonymous Bitcoin Wallets 2018
Anonymous Bitcoin Wallets: Full Guide
Quick inner navigation:
What is an anonymous Bitcoin Wallet?
An anonymous Bitcoin wallet is a wallet that keeps all your crypto-related activities private. Not many wallets offer this functionality, especially if those are mobile wallets. So if you are the type of people who prefer to keep crypto affairs private, you can accomplish it by getting an anonymous crypto wallet.
There are four well-known and the most anonymous Bitcoin wallets. So let us take a look at each of them, what they have to offer, the best anonymous Bitcoin wallets and also learn how to create anonymous Bitcoin wallet.
Best Anonymous Bitcoin Wallets
Samourai wallet >>
The Samourai wallet is an open-source wallet that promises to keep your crypto transactions private, your cryptocoins secure and your identity hidden. Currently, only the alpha version is available for Android only. The wallet was created by a group of privacy activists with a similar goal.
The Samourai wallet was launched in 2015, but it is still under development, as the developers plan on adding more features to the wallet.
The Samourai wallet has functionalities that enhance security, promote anonymity and facilitate transactions. Among these functionalities include:
Security
- Samourai uses military grade encryption. The process of encryption takes place on your phone through AES-256.
- It uses BIP 39 and BIP 44 protection standards to increase the safety while you use Samourai.
- A PIN is required to use your wallet. The PIN has to be 5-digit number or more.
- Your private keys are generated and stored on the phone. These keys are not shared, copied or stored on the company’s servers.
- Certificate pining to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
Privacy
- Samourai does not reuse addresses. Important metadata about your transactions or your identity are never leaked.
- Samourai randomizes the number of change outputs for each send. This makes it difficult for anyone to gather wallet address metadata.
- Samourai has Tor and VPN support that allows you to send all your transactions via an anonymous IP address.
Additional features
- Bitcoin Network Health Monitoring.
- Smart Miner Fees – this is a detection algorithm you can use to make sure that the confirmations are as fast as possible.
- BIP 47 – it helps enhance anonymity especially when you are making public payments.
- Ricochet – this is a type of transaction that improves exchangeability and discourages blockchain sleuths.
How to use Samourai?
Only an alpha version of Samourai is currently available for Android. You can download it from Google Play or directly from their website.
Making your first deposit
To make your first deposit, get your Bitcoin address.
- Press on “+button”, which is on the “main balance and transactions screen.”
- Then press the “Receive” button to launch the Receive screen. A QR code of your latest Bitcoin wallet will be displayed. Beneath the code, you will see the text version of the address. You can choose to scan the QR code or share the address manually by copying it to the clipboard.
- Scan the QR code on the Receive screen with any other Bitcoin wallet or paste the copied address and you are done. Samourai recommends depositing a minimum of $5 worth of BTC to be able to full advantage of all its features.
How to send BTC from Samourai?
To send BTC from Samourai, do the following:
- Scan the QR code from the recipient’s address.
- Press the Send button on the “main balance and transactions” screen. The send screen will open.
- Manually paste the recipient address, confirm that you have enough BTC for the transaction. Then press the Send button. You will be asked to confirm by pressing the “OK” button, and then wait for confirmation from the Bitcoin Network.
Despite being still under development, Samourai has a good reputation thanks to its advanced privacy and security features. It also offers a variety of other useful features that many other wallets do not. It’s a good choice for beginners and advanced users looking for a wallet that ensures anonymity and is easy to use.
Jaxx wallet >>
Jaxx is a multi-coin wallet that was created in 2014 by Decentral Inc, a blockchain company located in Toronto, Canada. The company was founded by Anthony Di Lorio, a co-founder of Ethereum.
Jaxx Wallet is one of the few anonymous wallets that supports several different digital currencies. With Jaxx, you can trade, hold and control Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Litecoin, Zcash, Civic, Augur, Bancor, Blockchain Capital and other digital assets.
Jaxx Features
- DAO refund feature – this feature allows DAO token holders to refund their DAO tokens at the initial rate of 1:100 (example 1BTC: 100DAO.)
- Pairing feature allowing you to access your Jaxx wallet from multiple devices.
- ShapeShift integration app for trading and executing transactions.
- 12-word security passphrase for better security.
How to use Jaxx Wallet?
Before we get into how to use Jaxx wallet, it is important to understand that Jaxx is a hierarchical deterministic wallet and not a static wallet. What this means is, Jaxx generates a new address each time funds are sent to your current address. By doing so, Jaxx wallet makes your transactions private.
A static wallet, on the other hand, uses a single address for all transactions. Although is simpler, reusing an address compromises your privacy.
To use Jaxx wallet, download it to your device, then set up your 12-word security passphrase and then launch your wallet.
How to send cryptocoins using Jaxx?
If you wish to send crypto to someone from your Jaxx wallet, you must have the address of the same cryptocurrency. For instance, if you are planning on sending Litecoin to someone, make sure you have their Litecoin address.
If the person you are sending to the crypto sends you a QR code, click on the Camera icon to scan the code. You can only do this if you are using a mobile version of Jaxx (Android or IOS.)
Once that’s done, enter the amount and click Send.
If you are using a non-mobile version of Jaxx, you’ll need to paste the address manually on the address box.
Platforms supported by Jaxx
- Android mobile phones
- Android tablets
- iOS mobile phones
- iOS tablets
- Windows, Mac, and Linux
- And also browser extensions
Jaxx wallets are very reputable and considered one of the leading wallets on the market nowadays. A few things you should know about Jaxx is for one, it doesn’t use multisig (multisignature) feature to authorize transactions. Also, you cannot make direct withdrawals from Jaxx to your bank account. You need to withdraw your funds from the wallet to an exchange that supports bank transfer as a payment method, then transfer your funds to your bank account.
Jaxx is a great wallet for newbies and crypto traders who want to store a few coins. It does not store any of your funds, wallet data or your information on any centralized server. All your data and information are stored on the client-side. As long as you have your 12-word backup phrase, you will be able to back up your wallet and restore all your digital assets.
Electrum wallet >>
Electrum is one of the oldest wallets in the crypto market. Created in 2011 by Thomas Voegtlin, a German computer science expert, the wallet has undergone various improvements since then thanks to the developers who have dedicated their time and efforts towards its development.
Electrum is a desktop wallet that supports only Bitcoin. The inventor wanted to create a wallet that would be efficient and lightweight. Since the wallet only supports Bitcoin, it has accomplished its intended purpose. It is indeed fast and efficient.
One of the many aspects of Electrum is its integration feature, which allows the wallet to integrate with hardware wallets such as, Keepkey, Ledger Nano S, and Trezor.
The wallet is also compatible with multiple platforms including Linux, Windows and Mac OS.
- Cold storage support
- Supports multisig
- Seed generation for restoring your wallet in case your device gets lost or damaged
- 2-factor authentication security feature
How to use Electrum?
You need to install the wallet first on your PC or Windows device. You can download it directly from Electrum’s official website.
After you install the wallet, you have the option of creating a new wallet or restoring a new wallet. If you are creating a new wallet, you will select this option and then select the wallet type. There are four types:
- Standard wallet
- Wallet with two-factor authentication
- Multi-signature wallet
- Hardware wallet
When you select a wallet of your choosing, you will then generate your Seed. Write it down somewhere because it will be not be saved on your device. The seed is used to restore your wallet and the digital assets contained in them in case, your device is lost or damaged.
After doing this, you can now send and receive BTC. Keep in mind that the process of sending and receiving BTC for the different types of wallets is not exactly the same. Some of the wallets require an authentication code to sign a transaction.
Electrum has a rather good reputation too. It is a widely used wallet because of its ease of use, superb privacy features and speed. It has earned a great deal of trust with the Bitcoin community because the setup is easy, its fast, it is secure and it does not take much space. However, it is not an ideal wallet for beginners. But if you are an advanced Bitcoin user, this is the wallet for you.
Rahakott Wallet
For all those people who value their privacy and anonymity while dealing with cryptocurrencies, Rahakott wallet is another great anonymous crypto wallet option. Despite being a relatively new wallet it has already gained attention due to its interesting services and features. For instance, the sign-up process does not require any personal information from the users and simply provides with a mnemonic phrase (set of random words). Along with the privileges it offers to the users Rahakott wallet is a quite safe wallet, especially in comparison to other online wallets.
- The Rahakott wallet uses two-factor authentication aka 2FA security.
- There is an algoristic support that generates new addresses for every transaction for the increase of the user anonymity.
- The wallet offers sub-account options.
- Rahakott wallet supports multiple cryptocurrencies.
- The wallet is easy to access.
- There are some transaction fees that are charged for transactions to external addresses worth 0.0005 BTC and for minimal network transaction fees worth 0.0006 BTC.
- Despite all the conveniences that come with online wallets those are not as safe as hardware wallets are.
If you are a person who values privacy and anonymity very much while using cryptocurrencies, then the wallets listed above should be good choices for you as a Bitcoin user. We hope that this article helped and guided you towards a safe, anonymous, and convenient choice.
Make sure to visit our website for more information about various crypto-related topics. Thank you, until next time…
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Welcome to the Yahoo Search forum! We’d love to hear your ideas on how to improve Yahoo Search.
The Yahoo product feedback forum now requires a valid Yahoo ID and password to participate.
You are now required to sign-in using your Yahoo email account in order to provide us with feedback and to submit votes and comments to existing ideas. If you do not have a Yahoo ID or the password to your Yahoo ID, please sign-up for a new account.
If you have a valid Yahoo ID and password, follow these steps if you would like to remove your posts, comments, votes, and/or profile from the Yahoo product feedback forum.
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Your search engine does not find any satisfactory results for searches. It is too weak. Also, the server of bing is often off
I created a yahoo/email account long ago but I lost access to it; can y'all delete all my yahoo/yahoo account except for my newest YaAccount
I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be 'secure' then it'll be 'unfair' gaming and I'll lose because of the insecurity can be a 'Excuse'. Hope y'all understand my explanation!
I want all my lost access yahoo account 'delete'; Requesting supporter for these old account deletion; 'except' my Newest yahoo account this Account don't delete! Because I don't want it interfering my online 'gamble' /games/business/data/ Activity , because the computer/security program might 'scure' my Information and detect theres other account; then secure online activities/ business securing from my suspicion because of my other account existing will make the security program be 'Suspicious' until I'm 'secure'; and if I'm gambling online 'Depositing' then I need those account 'delete' because the insecurity 'Suspicioun' will program the casino game 'Programs' securities' to be… more
chithidio@Yahoo.com
i dont know what happened but i can not search anything.
Golf handicap tracker, why can't I get to it?
Why do I get redirected on pc and mobile device?
Rahyaftco@yahoo.com
RYAN RAHSAD BELL literally means
Question on a link
In the search for Anaïs Nin, one of the first few links shows a picture of a man. Why? Since Nin is a woman, I can’t figure out why. Can you show some reason for this? Who is he? If you click on the picture a group of pictures of Nin and no mention of that man. Is it an error?
Repair the Yahoo Search App.
Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.
I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.
I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and I signed in so he could try to fix the Yahoo Search App not working. He also used another phone, installed the app from the Google Play Store to see if the app would do any kind of search thru the app. The Yahoo Search App just wasn't working.
I also had At&t try to help me because I have UVERSE for my internet service. My internet was working perfectly. Their Technical Support team member checked the Yahoo Search App and it wouldn't work for him either.
We can go to www.yahoo.com and search for any topic or website. It's just the Yahoo Search App that won't allow anyone to do web searches at all.
I let Google know that the Yahoo Search App installed from their Google Play Store had completely stopped working on May 18, 2018.
I told them that Yahoo has made sure that their Yahoo members can't contact them about anything.
I noticed that right after I accepted the agreement that said Oath had joined with Verizon I started having the problem with the Yahoo Search App.
No matter what I search for or website thru the Yahoo Search App it says the following after I searched for
www.att.com.
WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE
This webpage at gttp://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geJGq8BbkrgALEMMITE5jylu=X3oDMTEzcTjdWsyBGNvbG8DYmyxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDTkFQUEMwxzEEc2VjA3NylRo=10/Ru=https%3a%2f%2fwww.att.att.com%2f/Rk=2/Es=plkGNRAB61_XKqFjTEN7J8cXA-
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED
I tried to search for things like www.homedepot.com. The same thing happened. It would say WEBPAGE NOT AVAILABLE. The only thing that changed were all the upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
Then it would again say
could not be loaded because:
net::ERR_CLEARTEXT_NOT_PERMITTED
This is the same thing that happened when Samsung and At&t tried to do any kind of searches thru the Yahoo Search App.
Yahoo needs to fix the problem with their app.
Yahoo Search App from the Google Play Store on my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone stopped working on May 18, 2018.
I went to the Yahoo Troubleshooting page but the article that said to do a certain 8 steps to fix the problem with Yahoo Services not working and how to fix the problem. Of course they didn't work.
I contacted Samsung thru their Samsung Tutor app on my phone. I gave their Technican access to my phone to see if there was a problem with my phone that stopped the Yahoo Search App from working. He went to Yahoo and… more
How To Use Bitcoin Anonymously
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Bitcoin has a reputation in the public imagination for being an anonymous digital currency, like an internet equivalent of physical cash, but that is not entirely correct. When used normally, Bitcoin is more of a pseudonymous currency and not an anonymous one.
Anybody can download a simple piece of software and install it on their computer to use Bitcoin. Because it is a decentralized, peer-to-peer system, you do not need to register an account with any particular company or hand over any of your personal details (unless you choose to do so, for example with a web wallet provider). Once you have a wallet you can create addresses which effectively become your identity within the network. This already gives an enhanced level of privacy compared to other digital payment systems, because you can begin using the network anonymously.
There is also another side to Bitcoin, however. Because transactions must be confirmed by the network, and transaction history shared between all participants, there is a public record of all transactions which anybody can access. In fact, this is really what the ‘blockchain’ is – a shared public record of everything which happens on the Bitcoin network.
So, even though your personal identity as the owner of a wallet may not be public knowledge, all of the transactions you are involved in are public knowledge. This can be a problem for the privacy conscious user, not least because there may be other ways that an observer can link the wallets you use to your personal identity.
For example, most exchanges for buying and selling digital currency are centralized service providers who require at least some identity information from their customers before they can use the service. This is just one example of a service which uses Bitcoin but also requires identity information; there are many others, from casinos to online shopping sites.
By analyzing the activity which is visible to anybody on the public blockchain an observer may well be able to link your personal identity with all of the wallets you use and therefore your entire transaction history. In a way, this makes Bitcoin even less private than a bank account.
Fortunately there are things you can do to improve this situation.
A Beginner’s Guide to Using Bitcoin Anonymously
Basic Protection: Disposable Addresses
Many beginner’s will download their wallet software, create one or two address, and then keep using those addresses for an extended period of time. If you want privacy, then that is not the best way to use your wallet. The more you use an address the easier it is for an observer to build up a profile of your activity, whether for advertising or more sinister purposes, and even to link that activity to your personal identity.
Bitcoin addresses are not meant to be permanent locations for everything you do. Instead, it will enhance your financial privacy if you view addresses as disposable invoices – each time you are going to receive a payment you should create a new address specifically for that purpose, and then never use that address again afterwards. If you have a desktop wallet on your computer then you should be able to create any number of addresses with no problem, and no matter how many you create all of your old addresses will still be able to receive payment in case somebody sends you money using an old address they have on file for you.
Most wallets today will take care of this for you, automatically creating a new address each time you want to receive a payment, but it doesn’t hurt to be aware of this issue.
For additional considerations in choosing which wallet software to use please read: Anonymous Bitcoin Wallets Explained.
Bitcoin Mixing
(For a more detailed look at mixing, along with a complete step-by-step guide, please take a look at another of our articles: How to use a Bitcoin mixer / tumbler)
You can further enhance your privacy by using a mixing service. You can use this when you send a payment to somebody, when you are sending coins to your wallet from the site you bought them on, or you can even send money to another address you own through a mixing service in order to ‘launder’ it. This works by simply mixing up your coins with a large number of other coins from other sources before sending them out the other side. By doing this, it becomes difficult or impossible for an observer to link specific payments into the mixing service with specific payments coming out of the mixing service.
One popular and reasonably priced mixing service is offered by CoinMixer.se, but there are also many others about so if you like to shop around then a bit of Googling may be in order – just be careful to check for review though, because there are a couple of scam sites out there which claim to be mixers but actually steal your coins.
Buying and Selling Bitcoins Anonymously
If you want to make sure that your financial activities with Bitcoin cannot be connected back to your ‘real world’ identity, then you may well be wondering how to buy and sell Bitcoin anonymously.
It is when buying your coins that you are most at risk of your digital activities being associated with your personal identity, as many sites require you to verify your identity and provide ID documents in order to make a purchase. This is to help them to avoid prosecution under money laundering laws. So if you want to stay anonymous when using bitcoin this is an important part of the process.
If you cannot arrange a private deal using the methods below then you can buy using any other method and use a mixing service to transfer coins to your wallet. This will usually be enough to protect your privacy, although it isn’t quite as good as not revealing your identity anywhere in the first place and has a small cost.
Here are some instructions on how to go about arranging private deal to buy and sell coins:
#1 Using a peer-to-peer exchange where you can buy and sell with other individual users rather than a company will provide you with a better level of privacy than using a central service.
Here are some example of exchanges where you can buy and sell without providing personal details or without verifying those details (meaning you can use a false name) to the website:
Bitsquare: This is an entirely decentralized exchange, in which you trade directly with another individual without needing to go through a central service provider. You download a piece of P2P software rather than going to a website. When you open Bitsquare it creates your own ‘hidden service’ on TOR with your own .onion address, routing everything through this well established privacy service to hide your IP address – which can be used to identify you. There is no registration and no need to provide even a username. You do, however, need to provide a small security deposit of 0.01 bitcoin which you get back when you have made a trade or if you cancel your offer, so if you want to buy your first bitcoin then you will probably need to get some through one of the other options first. I personally rate this as the best method to buy and sell bitcoin anonymously, but the fixed fees mean that it is expensive for small amounts.
LocalBitcoins is one very popular peer-to-peer service for buying and sell coins, which operates in many different countries around the world. When using this site you have the option of providing identity information or not. Other users will also have the option of dealing with anonymous users or requiring identity information. Many users will require some kind of identity information, either through the site’s own ID verification system or privately over chat in order to protect themselves against both fraud and government investigation. But it is still possible to arrange anonymous trades through this method.
MultiSigna As the name implies, this exchange uses multi-sig technology for all exchanges, meaning that you do not need to trust your coins to the exchange for safe keeping, or rely on the exchange to keep their own internal books accurate – everything is on the blockchain. As the users of defunct exchanges like Mt Gox will attest, this is a big bonus in terms of security, and also makes them more decentralized and directly peer-to-peer than other options. The fees start out at the standard 0.5%, but if you are a regular trader and progress through the ‘user levels’ you can take advantage of reduced fees.
Coinffeine is not only peer-to-peer, but is also a decentralized exchange. Currently the only fiat payment method is OKPay, which has its own identification requirements, but you do not need to share personal information via Coinffeine itself and additional payment methods will be added in the future.
#2 When making a purchase on LocalBitcoins, users who are particularly concerned about their privacy should consider making payment in cash. This is particularly important if you are making a high volume of purchases because the volume alone may trigger a deeper investigation by your bank – for smaller amounts its less important but may possibly be preferable to some users. There are two ways to do this: an in-person trade where you meet up with somebody (often requires a larger purchase to make it worth their while coming to meet you), or ‘cash deposit’ where you go a branch of the sellers bank and deposit money directly into their account. Once you have signed up just click ‘buy bitcoins’, then underneath the list of the top offers you will see a link which says ‘Show More’ – this will show you a list of payment methods to choose from so that if you then click ‘cash deposit’, for example, you will see only offers from users wanting to sell you coins through this method.
#3 There is an ID verification system on the LocalBitcoins site, but its use is optional. Some sellers will require this, others will not. Some sellers may also ask you to send them a copy of your ID through a private message (although if you can make a cash trade either kind of ID requirement is less likely). Generally, providing your ID to an individual is better than uploading it to the main site, but some people may still be uncomfortable with this. Each seller should list their particular requirements within the advert, and you can also send them a message before opening a trade to get more information about their policies, so it is not difficult to ‘shop around’ for the right seller. Remember, however, that the offers listed here are constantly changing as different users go on and offline, so if none of the listings for your chosen payment method suit your needs it may be worth having a little patience and checking back later.
Stealth Addresses
Stealth addresses are a reasonably new feature which allows users to generate a new public address to represent any regular Bitcoin address. This means that you can then send money to this new stealth address without anybody knowing the true destination of the funds. You do need a wallet which supports this feature in order to use it, and at the time of writing it has not been widely adopted. If you want to give it a try then Dark wallet is a great place to start – its a browser wallet which works as an extension for Google chrome and includes stealth addresses as well as other privacy features.
Taint Analysis
If you have used a coin mixer then you can check how well its privacy services are performing with a taint analysis. This shows which addresses have sent coins to your address and is a good way to see whether mixing services are performing to your expectations. There are plenty of different service out there, so if one is working well you can always choose another.
You can perform a taint analysis using the Blockchain website. Here is an example link, just replace the BTC address with your address in the url to perform your own taint analysis: https://blockchain.info/taint/1dice6GV5Rz2iaifPvX7RMjfhaNPC8SXH
This will perform a kind of forensic test to see which addresses it thinks probably did send coins to the address you are checking. You can, for example, enter the address given to you for a marketplace site to check whether any observer would be able to tell whether your personal wallet sent coins to this address. Ideally you would want your personal address not to show up in the list at all when you do this kind of search, or at the very least you would want it to come up with a low taint % – meaning an observer could not say with any high degree of confidence that there was a link between the two addresses.
Using Bitcoin Anonymously
Bitcoin is often described as an anonymous currency because it is possible to send and receive bitcoins without giving any personally identifying information. However, bitcoin by itself is in most cases, not 100% anonymous. In fact, bitcoin is pseudonymous: sending and receiving bitcoins is like writing under a pseudonym. If an author’s pseudonym is ever linked to their identity, everything they ever wrote under that pseudonym will now be associated with them. In bitcoin, your pseudonym is the wallet to which you receive bitcoin. Every transaction involving that address is stored forever in the blockchain. If your address is ever linked to your identity, every transaction will be linked to you. But achieving reasonable anonymity is quite easy.
Buy Bitcoins Anonymously
What you can do in the first place is to buy bitcoins anonymously.
- The best option is to buy them with cash to avoid on-line exchanges totally. Most online exchanges require verification where you need to upload your ID and similar. You can buy bitcoins with cash on an atm or meet the seller personally. There is more information on how to do that on our buy bitcoins with cash section.
- The second best option is to buy them online atVirWox. This is not really completely anonymous as you need to reveal something, but still much better than most of the bitcoin exchanges that require a bank account and a personal document. Here you do not need anything like that, you just need a free account Virtual World Exchange. Using this account you can buy another currency – Second Life Lindens (SLL). You can buy SSL with various options, like PayPal and Skrill, but considering anonymity a good option is paysafecard that you can buy in any shop. With paysafecard, you can pay cash and anonymously fund your VirWoX account without id, bank account or credit card. Then you just easily convert your SLL to bitcoins and no verification is needed for doing that.
- Another option to get bitcoins is to get an anonymous bitcoin loan.
- Buying bitcoin with credit card anonymously is difficult, but here are a few ideas to buy bitcoin with credit card without verification.
Mix Your Bitcoins
If you already own your bitcoins, especially important is that you mix your bitcoins with other bitcoin owners. A bitcoin mixer, also known as a bitcoin laundry or bitcoin tumbler, is a service that breaks the link between you and your bitcoins, mixing your funds with others, so the trail back to you is unclear. While bitcoin mixing may not guarantee 100% anonymity, it does provide a very high level of anonymity, and it would be a difficult task for anybody to link you with properly mixed coins.
We recommend using a quality online mixing service such as Cryptomixer or CoinMixer to periodically exchange your bitcoins for different ones which cannot be associated with the original owner. In order to further enhance the security of your transactions they provide the opportunity to use two or more forward addresses as well as convenient time delays. They immediately delete all archival logs related to your transactions. You can also use Shared Coin for that purpose as it is free but a bit more complicated. Also, if you use anonymous Tor browser, you may want to try Bitcoinfog.
Please note that there are many scams out there that claim to offer bitcoin mixing services. The problem is that you will send them bitcoins and will never get anything back, so please stay with our recommended services to avoid the hassle and check your provider on forums!
Anonymous Bitcoin Wallet
As bitcoins are stored in a software program known as a bitcoin wallet and all of the above does not help, if your wallet is identifiable with your personal information. If you wish to remain somewhat anonymous when using bitcoins, such as paying for an adult website, then you should at least use a wallet registered to an anonymous and disposable email address.
Also use a different wallet for each transaction to avoid multiple transactions being traced back to you, as this is like maintaining multiple separate identities. A simple way to keep multiple wallets is to use MultiBit, a straightforward and lightweight software wallet that allows you to manage multiple wallets from one program. As for anonymous bitcoin desktop wallets, we are still searching for the best choice. Currently, the best advice is to use Tor browser to connect to an online wallet.
If you want even more anonymity, we suggest to make a paper bitcoin wallet. Maybe the easiest way is to use the code at bitaddress.org (beside anonymity you will increase security too, more info here).
The Open Bitcoin Privacy Project has released their first full report on the levels of privacy found in various bitcoin wallets. The best and most anonymous bitcoin wallet is Darkwallet, another two good wallets in terms of anonymity are also Armory and Mycelium.
Anonymous Bitcoin Debit Card
Wirex, a UK-based company, has launched a virtual and physical bitcoin debit card that works where VISA is accepted. Their bitcoin debit card is available right now for a very small fee.
You can order plastic or virtual debit cards that can be nominated in USD, EUR or GBP. All it takes is a valid email address and basic personal information to sign up, and once you requested your debit card, it will be sent to your home address. Unfortunately, this debit card is that is not available to residents of the United States.
Get 25% discount on all available cards if you register with this link.
Bitcoin transaction records
While using bitcoins is an excellent way to make your purchases, donations and p2p payments, transactions are never truly anonymous. Bitcoin activities are recorded and visible publicly via the blockchain. This is a comprehensive database that keeps records of bitcoin transactions.
Almost all exchanges require you to verify your identity by sending scanned personal documents. Also, they are required to report large transactions to the proper governmental authority. When you use bitcoin to pay for goods and services, you will also many time need to provide your name and address to the seller for delivery purposes. This means that someone with interest in tracking your activities can use your ID information as a basis from which to track your future transactions or to study your previous activity. In short, you have compromised your security and privacy.
That is why, if you want to stay anonymous, you must do both – get and spend bitcoins anonymously as described above.
Spend Bitcoins Anonymously
This part depends on what you want to get for your coins. The main idea to stay anonymous is that at purchase process you do not reveal any personal information. There are many services (mostly online) that accept bitcoins as a payment method, and they do not require any personal information.
Staying anonymous is easy if you need an online service. Subscription to xxx website, anonymous online casino, gambling and dice, anonymous sport bets, vpn (use DISCOUNT10 code for a discount), advertising, donating to wikileaks just to name a few.
It gets more complicated when you need some stuff to be delivered to you physically.
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