Bitcoin Forum

How important is privacy for you? In terms of making transactions online. As you know bitcoin is not very anonymous and once someone finds out your address, that can be linked to anything you have every purchased.

Privacy is important for me, it's part of the freedom we have. I think Bitcoin has enough privacy if you use it the right way, for example it doesn't limit you to create a certain amount of accounts/addresses, like banks do. Use this feature to give yourself more privacy, don't use an address multiple times for different payments if you want to stay anonymous. Also Bitcoin doesn't require any of your personal information, it's the exchanges and web-wallets that want you to register your personal details. Create a desktop wallet or generate a random address using bitaddress.org, you don't have to be connected to the internet to receive transactions. For extra privacy there is also something called a mixer, it fully anonymizes your transactions and as far as I'm aware of is legal in most countries.

So even though other alternatives exist like monero which are based on your high priority . You are still bullish on Bitcoin?

I'm not buying illegal goods, or even gambling, so I'd have to say I'm not all that concerned about people knowing my bitcoin address.   Cash is still the most anonymous form of currency--but as long as no one can link an address to a real person, bitcoin is pretty anonymous.  At least enough for most people.   

And yet somehow the feds end up catching criminals like the Silk Road posse.  I don't know.  I'm sort of indifferent.

That isnt the only reason though. If I know that your address is X and X has $100k in it, I can work harder at phishing you or even robbing you. Well even if law enforcement or another entity cant fully track people and their bitcoin address. New technology is making advancements and soon or later it will become easier.

Well I do think there isn't that much negative role when it comes to the whole idea of bitcoins

In fact the blockchain technology enables us to look at something in a very transparent manner..

It could easily stop corruption and we can look forward towards a better future.

I don't even know why one needs privacy if he is doing something right... Its a question when you are into something shady..thus I think.. I won't mind my privacy being breached .
In terms of transactions ^

Like I have said, it can put a target on your head. If I know you have $100k in BTC then I could try put more phishing attempts at you, or could rob you.

Privacy is important to me. I think thats why cryptocurrency was introduced in the first place. DeepOnion is an interesting coin using the tor network to guarantee anonymity, very interesting stuff!

I agree privacy is very important especially when it comes to assets. That's why I have been spending time investing on DeepOnion, as I feel it has lots of potential to beat Monero and Dash in the near future with all its upcoming features. This is just my opinion though and would suggest others do research before investing large amounts of money like me.  :)

Privacy is very important. The government always wants to see how much you make and have total control of your money when necessary.

Anonymous cryptocurrencys protect us from those type of thieves.

+1 for deeponion. wit hthe planned features it will be the best choice for full privacy. we need privacy in crypto and in the near furture i think the anonymous coins will be the ones to use. that why i'm heavily into deeponion.
 i'm not shilling i just believe in it. look at it for yourselves and make your own minds up. some anonymous coins in your portfolios is a must imo. get some deeponions

To a certain extent. When you want to cash out and use the money you make off of bitcoins, you are back on the grid. Due to this, I will never consider bitcoin to be completely anonymous, until (if at all) we reach the stage where bitcoin is a closed environment and you don't have to cash it out to use it.

As crypto becomes more mainstream there will be more demand for privacy coins. Monero and dash are too expensive right now, train has left already. Better off buying deep onion, cheap on the exchanges with huge growth potential next year!

Privacy is the main reason that has been not supported by government, in one point and it makes why there is some negative news show up

Privacy is important for me, maybe even more because I’m from Europe which gives much biger accent to this issue than USA for example. I like the feeling that my privacy is kept and protected and that my data are avilable to everyone. Bitcoin is not anymore anonimous like it used to be and there are many tools available that can help to identify the users and transactions but still you are not completely exposed by using it.

this does not seem too important.
because even if someone knows the transaction from the bitcoin address we have,
but at bitcoin address is not listed our personal data,
so this is not a problem, as long as our data is stored safely from every transaction that we do.
and we still have a sense of comfort about transacting using bitcoins

Privacy is of course very important i think.  The way i see it is, one wouldn't necessarily walk around the streets with a placard with all personal details on.  To my mind its a similar thing in crypto and online in general.   Its a sort of catch22 situation because, corporations and governments would probably want minimal privacy but the essence of crypto is the opposite in addition to all the other features and benefits it provides.

If you are very worried about privacy, perhaps you should try currencies created specifically to protect privacy. Although 100% no one can guarantee. Maybe I'm wrong.

How so funny as you stole my account and you talk about thieves...the irony!

I prefer fully private blockchain in bitcoin, but in the reverse, it's fully transparent where any of the people outside can follow our all transactions and transfers. Privacy lovers can go with Monero and zcash if they're rigid for privacy.

Bitcoin was never anonymous. There are enough safe practices you can follow to ensure that your privacy is protected. Some newbies still don't follow the basics, like not reusing addresses and being careful about linking addresses. It will take some time for safe practices to get ingrained in all bitcoin users.

I got to admit that Monero's cryptonight is really awesome and I really think that there technology adds something to the crypto technology but it can't replace Bitcoin. On the end all the coins that are listed on CoinMarketCap are based on Bitcoin, some of them add something new that is significant and a lot them don't. Monero deserves a community and it's value is justified but it's still a clone of Bitcoin that has some added technological advancements. Bitcoin is in my opinion capable enough to use as a private payment method, if you use it the right way. So I don't find it necessary to switch to a different coin.

For me, privacy plays a big role. I am still searching for the best privacy coin, currently on my watch are Monero, AEON, Anoncoin, NAV. Feel free to add one if you think something is missing. I know there is also Zcash and Dash.

Well yeah what I have noticed is that people dont want to switch from bitcoin because it is bitcoin. Very high customer loyalty and people are even willing to pay through the high fees.

Bitcoin's decentralized that has the feature of anonymity of every user. And I guess it is very attractive to users. And since that you are asking why, in my own experience and opinion privacy makes me feel secure and safe as a user. Safe in the sense that identity is not identified by others, no background checks including age, status, works. And as a student, it gives us the that feeling that we can be involved in such technology.
Though it is hard to tell if the privacy is used more in negative stuffs than positive it still gives everyone an opportunity to work with equity with others disregarding the life status of a person.

When it comes to the onion, you want to enter your world either in the forum of the onion and in this, it is for the desire to share and give to know it, I think we can all become big investors of the onion, it is a path to success, and all that is missing, what I hope most is when they have smart contracts, this is from another world.

So if privacy means so much, why dont you get a coin like Zcash or Monero? Bitcoin really isnt anonymous.

Security is the most important factor for people to love and invest in crypto, especially bitcoin. Thus the anonymity of bitcoin will always be appreciated. The future of bitcoin is still growing.

Personally for me privacy isn't much of an issue when making a payment online and it was not one of the reasons I was attracted to bitcoin, for me bitcoins biggest use case is that all transactions are trackable and that they can be quick and cost effective.

I would disagree and say that most people dont want to have "personal security". And what I mean by that, is that people dont want to be responsible for their own coins. Which is why Coinbase has been so successful. I think the level of privacy that bitcoin has is perfect, your identity isnt directly attached to it.

I really just want enough privacy for people not to know how much money I have and what I have been spending on. I find Bitcoin's anonymity features to be enough for that. I assume most people are basically the same way. If total anonymity were such a huge factor for people, then Monero would be the number one cryptocurrency right now. Despite public perception that Bitcoin users are criminals, I'm pretty sure 99% of us are average joes.

Of course, if Bitcoin's anonymity isn't enough to satisfy your requirements, you could always use Bitcoin mixing services such as Chipmixer.

Privacy is important yes, but I don't need complete anonymity. While you use visa, bank transfers and other fiat methods you don't care about the anonymity part do you? Unless you are doing something illegal I don't think there is any reason to be worried about anonymity.

Like I have said, there are other reasons you might want to be anonymous besides doing illegal things. People are able to see how much money is in your wallet since everything is open. So with that knowledge if they are able to connect your address to your name, they can target you. People could then try and rob you, phish you etc

Privacy is very important for me, that is why I joined Bitcoin back in 2014, to hide my money. And Bitcoin perfectly permits it, it just needs to be used properly, as about anything in fact.

I dont think your proposition is correct. If one finds out your address all he can do is to trace to whom you have sent payment and from whom you have received the same. It does not really tells anyone about the owner of the account therefore cannot reveal regarding the goods you have purchased.

As it comes to privacy in online transaction. This occupies a utter importance in my transactions. But frankly speaking I am not quite a person who even wants to conceal such transactions from any central authority. But one would surely want that details regarding his purchases and transactions is not readily available to someone.

I know since Bitcoin is not completely anonymous, anyone can track the public transactions. However, it is difficult for the third party to find the link between me and receiver (as I use paid VPN + other security features), even in that case I don't have any issues with the privacy if government is tracking my transactions or acquiring my financial data as I am not against taxes but when it comes to the third party, I am afraid of the hackers spying on me to acquire my data to steal my funds.

Well privacy is important to me mate, way back I thought bitcoin have this complete features since its decentralized but after learning that its not really safe dealing big transactions using this coin as wallet address can be trace and connect to us putting our security at risk so for now I do avoid using bitcoin in any transactions online as I don't want being trace and targeted by some hackers even I only got portion of btc inside my wallet.

You have to manage your privacy by not reusing the same Bitcoin address for all your purchases. I have 100s of Bitcoin

addresses and none of them are linked to each other. Whomever is trying to track my purchases, will have a hard time sorting

and putting them together... if at all. I also use different services and different hardware wallets and boot with different

OS's.  ;D

You dont think in the future people will have the technology to still track your purchases?

I love privacy that's why i use bitcoin because it gives me the financial freedom to send and receive transactions with any government or centralized entity spying. I got no problem in bitcoin's anonymity the tracker will surely have hard time tracking it especially when you use different addresses. No matter how secure something is the greater flaw of a program is human itself.

Confidentiality for finance is very necessary, and for crypto currency, even more so. Unfortunately, the original bitcoin possesses only relative confidentiality. If you want, using the blockchein journal open to the public, you can track some transactions first, and then you can identify the identity of the bitcoins owner. In a sense, these issues are solved by coins that have separated from bitcoin, such as bitkoyn diamond, which hides the sum and balance in the purse for general access, which is very important, since wallets with large sums are primarily subjected to hacker attacks.

Indeed we sacrifice our anonymity when we use wire transfers and creditcards. But question is: do we do this because we want to do, or do we do this because we have no other choice? I do nothing illegal at all, not with crypto and not with fiat. But I still want the right to stay anonymous if I want to. I dont want to expose my identity to every shop I purchase something from and I dont want to expose my identity to individuals when I buy something on ebay. I bet you would also not be happy if you had to fill in all your personal information everytime you go shopping in a store you didnt went to before, do you? Furthermore all this big data can backfire once, we are giving up our identity so easily, because we dont see any bad in it. But what will happen when a corrupt government comes into power in your country and uses all this big data against you? Bet you wish that you stayed anonymous in some cases than. Best example for this was when the nazis invaded the netherlands, they just had to check the newly implemented stamp card system to find all the jews they were looking for. The jews didnt think anything could happen to them when they gave away their religion to those cards. Hope you understand what I want to show with this example.

I think complete anonymity might bring us some problems. I support what Monero is doing and i'm all for a minimalist government, but what would happen if everyone held their income and revenue in privacy coins and no one paid taxes? We'd have no roads, hospitals, etc... I think its a complex subject and requires a lot of research and study to see the best approach in practice between anonymity and transparency.

i don't really care myself. i don't spend it on anything weird or incriminating. anyone who does want to cut the link between their id and their known addresses can go and mix it and start over.

if i was a business, gambler or pervert then it might be a different matter.

Privacy is very important for me.I don't want either the government authorities or private people to trace my transactions and know whatever i do with my bitcoins.I don't want any one of them to get an idea that how much bitcoins i actually have.Otherwise,i would have to risk myself of losing bitcoins just as a turkish businessman lost his 450 bitcoins to kidnappers by just showing his extravagant lifestyle in facebook.

I don't care about extreme privacy offered by coins like monero or zcash..... for me privacy offered by bitcoin or ethereum transactions is enough.

This is very important in my transaction. But frankly I'm not a person who even wants to hide such transactions from those central systems anywhere. I have multiple accounts from Bitcoin addresses and none of them are related to each other. Anyone who's trying to track my purchase will find it difficult to sort them together. If someone knows your address, all he can do is track who you have sent the payment to and from whom you have received the same :P

Privacy is important but has limitations well in terms of bitcoin transactions there are some point that I want to keep private but some must be transparent especially to legislative bodies because somewhat its a way of protecting ourselves from illegal activities that may harm our transactions because we are not aware. Bitcoin transactions so far is very private that no one can trace who is the person behind every transactions that is the issue of governments that needs to be settle so that bitcoin can declare to be a legal tender of the world.

Privacy plays a large role in Bitcoin and in Cryptography. If you know how to use a computer, then try to research more on it so you could learn the new methods for new electronic systems.

For me it does play a big part, but, considering that Bitcoin grew so fat, it's not mainly because of it's features or what the blockchain tehnology can offer. I'd say it about making profit, which is a bit out of the context.

Here privacy will be a big requirement for the users who utilize it for different forms of illegal uses. For people who use iit in a legitimate manner, Privacy is not at all a concern. I expect privacy while being into gambling, but with bitcoin privacy is the one among the major factors that add value to it.

Privacy has a big part on bitcoin ,for me it was decentralized and I dont want any of my transactions seen by others or any third party who allows on it.I want to protect it from any harm or any criminal activities that others will do.It was important that it plays a big role to privacy of us no one wants without privacy of our transactions,We all want safety and secured money banking with bitcoin.

I am on this side. It exlained well what is on my mind and what i believe. You can keep low profile while doing your transactions. Just add some extra care in doing so.

It is very crucial to bitcoin to have privacy because it can protect them from hackers and taking advantage of other users account. People will trust and commit to bitcoin because they are secured with the help of login with their password and additional captcha information.

Why do you need that extra high security? There is no need of this. There are mixers for them who needs it and these mixers already do their job on high level, I haven't seen mixer owner or mixer user caugh ever (it will only happen if person made mistake, forget somethinf or etc like kickass admin did when he logged in in fb and apple's account with one ip). So privacy is important on moderate level and that's protected.

It is very interesting to see what the community thinks about privacy. I would like to hear more.

As long as money is involved, privacy will always play a big part. No one wants to announce how much money they have, or how are they spending it. Unfortunately, bitcoin is not totally anonymous in its transactions and once you know how to tract things in blockchain, you can have a way to connect dots and lead an address to a person. But there are also ways you can protect your privacy like not using the same address over and over, using mixers and not linking any address to any social media accounts.

If privacy is such a big part of the community, I would think coins like monero or zcash would have a higher market cap. Would like to hear more about individual privacy.

Privacy is very important as this is for one's own protection. You wouldn't want everyone to know that your transacting "x" amount of money with even just your real name right? Because if you do, this will open you up as a target for hackers, thieves, relatives who needs a loan and worst, identity theft. For me, it's very important as it makes me more comfortable doing my business without anyone constantly looking at me.

Everyone needs privacy to protect themselves from becoming possible hacker targets, but on the other hand what if that  one person is doing something illegal that might endanger others? A certain amount of actions should be traceable that could indicate a dangerous situation in the making.

Privacy is one of the main pillars of cryptocurrecies in the first place. It is why people get into crypto and heck, it is even what the point of "crypto" means. Although most coins, actually all of them including Bitcoin are not completly private except for Monero. Monero is truly 100% anonymous and people can never know who you are when you use it.

privacy is very important..for example do you really want every one knows that you have a large amount of money..I know that some of you will hypocritically say that its ok but in real life you don't..even with your relatives and love ones you don't show them all..sometimes there are things that is better to be secret or private for your sake or theirs..

Privacy is an important aspect.It is the reason since bitcoin is pseudo anonymous,many have chosen bitcoin to stay away from the hands of governments.But if we still feel that bitcoin transactions could be easily traced,then we could use one of the mixer services available.

Let me ask you soemthing... would you rather that your transactions be private or public?

If you answered public, I really don't understand why.

I would think most people want their transactions to be pricate for the obvious reason you don't want people snooping on your life and what you spend all your moeny on, obviously.

this does not seem too important. importantly we always be careful using our data
because even if someone knows the transaction from the bitcoin address we have,
but at address bitcoin not listed our personal data,
so this is not a problem, as long as our data is stored safely from every transaction that we do.
and we still have a comfortable feeling of transact using bitcoin so for me not a problem.

I think that the privacy of bitcoin is one of its advantages and the reason why many people risked investing in it

I prefer to use my personal blockchain completely in my bitcoin, but instead, completely transparent where the people outside, can follow all our transactions and transfers. so that's my explanation, thanks.

of course very important to me, with minimal privacy can prevent data from being spread to the public, I think bitcoin has a clear identity, but in terms of our own security that keep it, I do not expect any btc missing from the wallet because of my carelessness.

in my case, i dont really mind having these so called privacy because im only just an average joe without any big business or wealth though there were some people that eagerly wants it in order for them to hide their current identity or other important infos to the pubic. bitcoin is not totally anonymous but that doesnt mean you can easily be track down just by linking your bitcoin address to something else because  bitcoin addresses can be easily created and fake, you can create many junk or spam bitcoin address as you wish in order for you to always stay anonymous in any way. also some bitcoin wallets have an option to generate new address every transactions just for privacy matters.

All of this information will help me better evaluate some of the privacy coins like zcash, and monero.

I just find it very interesting that for alot of people privacy is very high on there list of needs for crypto. But yet the real "privacy" coins are only a small percent of the crypto currency market cap. With technology advancing, I would not be surprised if governments could just plug in your address and find out who owns it in a  matter of minutes. ( Assuming you bought the coins on a site like coinbase, that keeps track of your transactions and requires Identity. )

We as individual have their own privacy. Privacy very important because it is for our safety and protection from any cheaters and hackers or any possible dangers. We should have security and becareful in every areas of accounts, wallets, before performing transactions especially in onlines.

Actually privacy is not so important for me. In real.lofe also i always open to everybody.
If someone know my address and linked to anything that i purchase, at least i dont get hacked and thats fine.

Thats certainly true, I also think that governments have measures in place to find out who a crypto address belongs to, although I dont think that this thread is representative for the whole crypto space. I think that only a minor percentage is valueing privacy a lot. I guess those people that really want to use privacy coins for the purpose of staying out of the reach of governments wont be so stupid to buy their coins through coinbase etc., there are other ways to obtain crypto than regular centralized exchanges.

Privacy is too important to us, it helps individuals maintain their autonomy and individuality. People define themselves by exercising power over information about themselves and a free country does not ask people to answer for the choices they make about what information is shared and what is held close. At the same time, this does not mean that public policy should shield people from the costs of their choices. Privacy over your data is very important to keep from stolen and loss.

You can still be anonymous if want. You just have to use your imagination. As for me I don't care if that transaction can trace back to me.

Care to share your tips and tricks?

I think if you are really into privacy thing then its better to used other coins such as Monero. But there are really people who doesn't care about privacy, maybe they are not doing anything illegal or they really doesn't care.

As for me, I used mixing services to hide my privacy in the network. It added a additional later and protection on my identify. And I'm not doing anything illegal but I just don't want people tracking my every moved in the blockchain.

I think complete anonymity might bring us some problems. I support what Monero is doing and i'm all for a minimalist government, but what would happen if everyone held their income and revenue in privacy coins and no one paid taxes? We'd have no roads, hospitals, etc... I think its a complex subject and requires a lot of research and study to see the best approach in practice between anonymity and transparency.

Nobody wants to be meddled during making transactions online. We need privacy because it serves as protection of our accounts from outside attacks.

In my opinion, most transactions being done with Alt coins with 100% Anonymity are linked to criminal actions. <Money laudering / Drugs / Child porn etc.> If Satoshi wanted Bitcoin to be 100% anonymous, then he would have done that from the start. I think he knew, Bitcoin would not go mainstream, if it was 100% anonymous. <Governments would have banned it>

We need a technology that are on par with the anonymity that cash gives us. This is why Bitcoin is Pseudo-anonymous. ^smile^

Privacy play a very important role for me. I feel that by following some privacy rules I can live my life more peacefully. Not following the privacy and constantly worrying about the hackers is worthless .Why not follow the rule and live unworried.

Most times I don't use bitcoin to pay for goods or use it for any illegal transactions am not gambling, the only thing I use bitcoin for is to exchange it and use the money to support my family financially. Or using bitcoin to send money across to my family as it the cheapest and easiest way now. And this comes with privacy because I don't have to go to the bank or any agent to carry out my transactions.

I think that the most important thing about cryptos are the privacy.. and now all the governments are trying to spy into bitcoin transactions or addreses to see if one of they citizens are doing something wrong, they always want to profit from that kind of things.
that is why most times i use to use a mixer.

Privacy is very important to me as it is also important to everyone. Although bitcoin is pseudonymous, still the freedom that it is giving is something that we should be grateful enough. We can now be somehow at ease that with our every online transaction, we can be free from third-party entities that are always interacting with every single one of it.

privacy is very important to all of us especially nowadays...lots of scammer and burglar...you ork hard then in just a blink of an eye your hard earned money is in others hand already..so painful so privacy for me is vey important

Exactly. The sudden and drastic rise in btc value not only attracted investors but people whonhave nothing good to do with their lives. Hackers and scammers are everywhere so we can all.agree that privacy is really essential

Many people use bitcoins because of the anonymity that if offers.It would depend on the person on what they share and what level of privacy they are comfortable with.

Even if you use mixers and programs like that, technology is being built to figure out the paths. So to me "privacy" in the community is not a high priority generally, because if it was monero or zcash would be #1.

I respect the feature of privacy and it is important to most people nowadays but it is not important for me because nobody cares about me like they are going to trace about my money so that they can find what do I do with my money how do I earn it. I spend most of my money on my needs and in my education so I do not think I should care about privacy. But let's assume that our government do not want us to use or accept Bitcoin in our daily life then I think we can use VPN or anything else to hide our activity but still we are going to use it because it is no wrong and at that point privacy will be important for everyone in my country.

It would be a problem if you had a "good amount of money" for a thief. Which could literally be $100. If they know where you live because they have linked your identity they could rob you for it. We havent seen any cases of robberies over $100 YET, however we have seen millionaires get robed because their identity was linked.

Privacy plays an important role in my life like privacy in information because not all should need to divulge. For me, i need also to be alone so that I can have time to myself .