Bitcoin Forum

EDIT: Thread deprecated.
Please SEE this thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=23354




Staying anonymous is one of the key reasons why many people love the decentralized, peer to peer currency known as Bitcoin.

However, according to both the Bitcoin Wiki as well as many developers, it appears Bitcoin is not as anonymous as people have believed it to be. A lot of misinformation is out there.  There are actually many ways you can easily be tracked while sending and receiving Bitcoins.  It is strongly recommended to generate a new address when receiving Bitcoins.  This helps to maintain anonymity, but also to help keep transactions organized.

However, when you send coins, your coins are randomly sent from various addresses that you received Bitcoins to.  This means that when you send money, there is a very high possibility that the people who have sent money to you in the past will be able to see your other addresses, and thus see your entire transaction history.  With this history, they can pinpoint some serious details about your Bitcoin wallet.

Luckily, this is all a thing of the past.  There was a patch released on MtGoxLive.com for the Bitcoin client that will help you stay anonymous even when sending funds to another address.  Checkout more in this link with a full text, binaries, source code/github links and video examples!

http://forum.mtgoxlive.com/showthread.php/11-Patching-The-Bitcoin-Client-To-Make-It-More-Anonymous (http://forum.mtgoxlive.com/showthread.php/11-Patching-The-Bitcoin-Client-To-Make-It-More-Anonymous)

 :)  Stay safe and anonymous online!

Just a heads up to anyone thinking about installing this, I would not recommend it until it has been vetted. Installing anything bitcoin related it a good way to lose your bitcoins.

I agree.
The whole idea of this patch is nice but just installing patches/software without knowing if its save isn't the smartest thing...

Yes, you guys are definitely both welcome to checkout the open source code which is available on github on that same link.
Hope that helps you guys, and it was already there before I posted as well.  So please checkout the source code thoroughly.

I'll wait 'til the patch is incorporated into the official client

It needs to be a dropdown, with the balance available on each bitcoin address.  This information is available to the bitcoin client.

Will

one caveat.  say i got a coin from alice and then sent it to bob.   now if bob were to somehow figure out that it came from alice, alice might reveal that she was not involved in the transaction since that coin was first sent to me and to me only.

so while this reduces the number of actors in a transaction it may not in many instances help with anonymity.  i do much prefer having this as an option though and hope to use a client with this built-in.

Total edit of this post:   Supporting this.  Always look into links yourself though :)  Always.

Hopefully this will be incorporated in the official client soon.  It's a great feature.  :-*

I'm not really concerned about whether this particular patch is legit or not, I just think that people should not be in the habit of installing patches based on forum recommendations. Especially when money is involved.

Interesting ... the video on that link shows he is playing with namecoin addresses in the gui ... must have got the bitcoin gui working on a namecoin wallet ... double interesting.

I concur.
The new tab is maybe not really needed. A dropdown list on the send dialog should be enough to keep it simple and still usable.
What if I need several input addresses to complete the transaction ?