Bitcoin Forum

A large number of people who use this forum attempt to post anonymously (including myself).

I do not like having a permanent account and frequently switch my username. Having a permanent account gives an observer the opportunity to link information from multiple posts together to build a profile of the real user.

I think this is a feature that would be very welcome.

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This would first require the newbie jail be removed

Special category of the newbie jail?
Guest section

I could see this happening, but that seems limiting to what anonymous posters are seeking.

How does 4chan keep the spam out?

Recaptcha

Perhaps anonymous posters could be subject to that?  With membership removing the need for recaptcha

Seems plausible it works for the most part the rest can be moderator supplemented

How about pay-per-post?

Interesting idea but that defeats OP's point about anonymity if your paying per post, unless you meant the Captchas generate revenue using an ad system.

Nailed it.

How about to post anonymously the poster needs to deposit a few cents worth of BTC?

Perhaps the BTC could be sent back to the poster after a period of time, unless the post is considered spam by a moderator.

Thermos get in here!

If you send from some webwallet or mixeraddress, it is anonymous enough..

Edit In saw your two posts after, that does make it anonymous enough

The pay-per-post could also have another interesting function. If an anonymous user needs to prove they are a previous poster, they could sign a message from the address they used to pay-per-post to prove so.

I will code the plugin to do this if there is a small bounty offered for it.

Isn't there a guest mode available?

Why not just create a new account (over a VPN) then only post from TOR?  Easy way to post anonymously.

Because of this


For example, in one post a user mentions being from the UK, on another he mentions being an avid player of an online video game, in another he reviews the bitcoin exchange he uses, in another he mentions his brothers name. Over time these little pieces of information can be used to build a profile of the actual user and possibly deanonymize them.

1. Don't talk too much about yourself.
2. Delete posts older than x days.

About 1, well sure thats something, but after posting for a number of years you'd be surprised at what can be found out. Law enforcement have used this to identify prominent hackers in the past, I recall one hacker who as identified from 9 years worth of IRC chat logs, they were able to determine his politicial views among other things and essentially "worked" backwards once they found their suspect.

So lets say they read your posts and find out that John Doe fits the profile of malevolent based on your political views, writing style, information leaks etc. They can work backwards and try to link John Doe to malevolent in order to prove and that John Doe is malevolent. They can do things such as tor timing attacks and using your ISP to do deep packet analysis in order to prove John is malevolent.

Deleting posts is more of security by obscurity, your posts may be stilled indexed by websites such as Google cache and web.archive.org, its also included in forum backups and its possible at least one person is scraping posts on this forum, especially considering we've recently had a number of high profile users posting here such as Ross Ulbricht. Some forums have RSS feeds too and if thats the case it will be in the cache of thousands of users RSS software.

In fact the case against Ross Ulbricht would be much weaker if he had been using an anonymous account to post here.

Google cache doesn't usually go by more than few days back, and the wayback machine doesn't archive everything.
AFAIK, only a few people have forum backups and even less have access to unencrypted backups.

I agree it is possible to find out a lot about people but it's usually because those people aren't good about guarding their personal information and share it too easily with others, often unasked. 

Here's an example:
http://antilop.cc/sr/ (scroll down a bit)

If you place a high value on your info you should make a good effort at keeping it private. If you engage in activities that can land you years in prison you should be even more vigilant, maybe also print the relevant pages of the penal code, and hang it above your bed or something :P

I was pretty sure you get an account is banned message if you try it.

That's because some TOR nodes are banned. You simply need to change identity on TOR.