Bitcoin Forum

Dear Bitcoin users,
 
I am conducting a survey as part of my thesis at the Humboldt University of Berlin and I need your thoughts and opinions regarding anonymity in Bitcoin.
 
Completing the questionnaire will take about 10 minutes of your time. If you are interested in the results of the survey, please state your email-address on the last page. Of course your email-address will only be used to inform you about the research findings. All data will be treated as highly confidential and anonymously stored.
 
http://www.unipark.de/uc/BITCOIN/66b7/
 
I would be glad about your participation!

Ulrike Sander

habs mal ausgefüllt Ulrike  ;)

sofern es weitere fragen gibt, PM.


(aber die menge an BTC im eigenen besitz beantwortet dir niemand ehrlich  :P )

Completed.

Great survey, some very good questions.

I've completed it as well, without entering my email. You can always publish your results here.
There were only minor problems with it, although I can't do the survey again to tell you exactly what it is. A example would be the question related to the way that I store Bitcoins. I was not able to deselect a option once selected; I could only switch it between the 3 answers.

I just completed it. I must say it is well done professional survey, I liked how you don't have to fill every field (especially regarding personal information).
Good luck with your thesis and please post results of your research here as I don't think many people will give you an email address.

survey completed.

as mentioned couple of times here above, I have to confirm, that it is one of the best survey which I ever saw related to bitcoin. Hope that valuable outputs help the university and help us with another bitcoin direction.

I don't post my mail for privacy reasons, will be there some public results or something?

Id like to get some more input on:

"Finding out the IP address via the Bitcoin address"

Some of the vulnerabilites sounds like you pulled them out of your behind (pardon my french).

Yeah, I've heard about this several times from newbies. However, I do not think that it is possible and thus have only answered as not concerned. AFAIK the only IP address that is visible is the one from the node that relayed the transaction, correct?
There is also this 'claim' (http://www.welivesecurity.com/2014/11/26/bitcoin-hack-can-reveal-ip-addresses-anonymous-transactions/), but it doesn't relate to normal users even if it was true.

---
But Gavin Andreson indeed notes that

    "Unless you are very careful in the way you use Bitcoin (and you have the technical know-how to use it with other anonymizing technologies like Tor or i2p), you should assume that a persistent, motivated attacker will be able to associate your IP address with your bitcoin transactions."
---

i guess we should target that problem with a sidechain in the future  :P

Yes, its possible with transactions and a lot of motivation/resources, but we are talking about "Bitcoin addresses" here. If I call someone over the phone and tell them my bitcoin address, how are they going to get my IP? I might not even have an IP associated with that address at that moment in time as the private key for that address was generated offline and was never communicated outside said phone call.

ok i filled the survey. I'd rather not leave my email, but im curious about the results and what you are using it for. maybe when you are finished you could post some info.
thanks

The moment you send a transaction from that address, the IP can be found. If someone connects to every single node in the network, then the node where the transaction first comes from is the node that owns that address, theoretically. This of course can be circumvented in many ways.

i think the survey is for a social science thesis so i guess no shame that op doesnt understand the technicals.

it is just about the anonymity of bitcoins and if users are mainly interested because of it.

*edit
cant deduct ip address from bitcoin address - thats not possible.
you can do that with transactions though!

Usander, researchers come to this forum all the time asking for our time and insight. However they rarely share their findings with us (or pays us). Thanks for giving us the option - can you also post the findings to the forum so everyone can benefit?

I encourage all other community members to make the same requirement/request.

For a survey about anonymity you should provide results to everyone so ppl filling out your survey can remain anonymous (and not give you our email address as you request.)

There are plenty of ways to get a rough estimate of an IP address associated with a particular bitcoin address.

• If you use electrum, then the electrum server that you connect to will both know your IP address and a complete list of addresses in your wallet.
• If you use a block explorer on the clearnet, then that block explorer will know what addresses you looked up and your IP address. They can further narrow down who owns a particular address by looking at who is looking at a particular address around the time transactions are sent to/from a particular address. They can also get an idea as to which IP address is associated with a bitcoin address by looking at who looks at multiple addresses that are either spend-linked together or are connected via cluster analysis, especially when someone looks at multiple addresses prior to the spend link or the cluster occurs.
• If you were ever to spend inputs from a particular address, then someone could look at who broadcast such transaction (this was mentioned previously)
• If blockchain analysis were to reveal that a particular service or exchange sent an address bitcoin, then an attacker could ask that service for the IP address of the person they sent the payment to
• Probably others that I cannot think of off the top of my head

Overall, I don't think this risk is very large because it will generally take a lot of resources to determine the IP address associated with a particular address, and the amount of resources required to "hide" the IP address is generally going to be low (use TOR).

edit: I also took the survey

Just completed the survey, it's nicely done. I think it would be better for everyone if you share the results in this thread  :)

This question is misleading: How much BTC is on average on your Bitcoin account?

Post people don't have accounts (like one would for Xapo or Coinbase), most hold independent wallets and several of them. So if you want to know what the average amount is on someone's wallet you need to get more specific - alot of people have a wallet for spending, which would have a low average balance and others for saving their balance, which would have the higher average balance.

You could change the question to: How much BTC do you own on average?

Good questions and survey structure overall. Thanks.

This is very true .  You make a good point.

I will be happy to take your survey.  :)  Always good to see people studying bitcoin.  Personally I only have 1.2 bitcoin at the moment.  :(  I made to sell one last week to pay a bill.

completed, the problem with those kind of surveys is that there is no way you can say that they are telling the true, someone or a group might fake it to tarnish bitcoin or other for praising it

i doubt many will respond sincerely to this "How much BTC is on average on your Bitcoin account?" for example...

Alright I guess I understand where they are hinting at, thanks. I would not put the "via TX" into that group though as this was listed as a seperate issue.

Absolutely true. I've conducted a survey about bitcoin too and I mostly got some answers that are too good to be true or just some lazy guy answering the survey.

PS: I've completed the survey thoroughly. Good luck.

Hey, I completed the survey and it opened up my opinion about privacy a little more than it used to be. I use several methods to increase my
 
financial anonymity BUT I guess for most expert hackers out there would poke holes in it.

If your sole goal to use Bitcoin is 100% anonymity, you are in the wrong place... nothing in my opinion is 100% anonymous.  ??? ???

in the days before BTC you had to use services like Paypal or Credit Cards. not very anonymous. not cheap. and not cool  8)

with bitcoin you have an enormous improvement in all these fields!

This is interesting, as I've missed that quote from Gavin. I always thought that it was probably possible in some circumstances. This is why I've checked 'aware, but not concerned'.
Learning how to use a VPN is easier than learning how to use Bitcoin.

Yeah. There are improvements in every single field, ranging from fees, anonymity, transaction speed and such.

there is an improvement , but nobody seems to care enough to use it. there isn't enough places that have bitcoin payment alongside paypal or credit card.

Hey everyone!

Thank you guys for your participation!

Sure, I can post the results here, but in order to evaluate the survey in a more sensible way I would need some more participants! I want to remember that no comprehensive knowledge about anonymity in Bitcoin is necessary for completing the survey. Everyone using Bitcoin is more than welcome to participate!

Thanks again!

Ulrike

Completed, I hop it will help.

Great survey, amazing questions!

Done. Good luck with your research.

do you own BTC  :) ?