Bitcoin Forum

If anyone can please add their expertise here on being completely anonymous for the sake of the masses. In a world that is centering on control and tracking activity as a means of control, what are the best measures one can take in any given region for the sake of remaining completely anonymous online with not only bitcoin transactions but online anonymity with delicate private information on not only location whereabouts but financial data, social data, phone number and email privacy etc?

You can choose non KYC platforms and if you want to protect your privacy, always use Tor connection on the Internet. Some locations don't allow you to use Tor and you have to use bridge.

Check https://kycnot.me/ with two tabs: Exchanges and Services.

With Services tab, you will have some like VPN services; Domain, Hosting a& VPS; Phone numbers & SMS; Giftcards & Goods; Various tools; Anonimization; Cloud storage; Other services.

Check https://www.privacytools.io/ too.

It must be hard to really be anonymous in every way. Because as long as your phone is turned on, it can be traced when you have used it on one platform. I watched several tips, but they always said that once you have used your data in one exchange, it's recorded there on the database.

But it's possible to make a wallet anonymous by depositing coins that go through many layers. This I think is more important. I'm not an expert though.

Governments are against this approach and if you are planning long term holding, it will be almost impossible to hide these details in a  developed country. Do not get scared because of this, just pay the taxes and live peacefully. Government will get little relaxed with time and reduce the boundations related to crypto.

A bit stupid to think that the government would just let you do your thing just because you're following their guidelines, that's a naive thinking because I know that almost every governing body out there wants to control their population to the point where they can move them to do what they think is best for the state. Regarding anonymity, I don't think that OP understands how the Internet works, there's no such thing as complete anonymity, more like pseudonymity. Maybe you can avoid tracking for awhile but if you plan to stay on this forum, it's going to be a difficult thing to do.

In life, you try to control what you can and do all you can to minimize the effect of what you cannot control. In my country, you cannot be anonymous unless you don't buy anything or do any financial transactions. Or you decide not to own a phone which is not possible for now. But there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of remaining unknown. One of the ways is to stay away from social media. Some persons are so addicted to these platforms that they can write their autobiographies through detail on their social media platforms. They are in the market, bank, or home on the street, it will be uploaded to their social media account.

Another way is that instead of keeping your money in banks or exchanges, become your bank through a centralized wallet. Exchanges and bankers will always want to know more things about you. They will keep asking for more information until they know virtually everything about you.

Hiding your social data, phone number and email are too much, are you really want to hide everything in this world? it's not possible because you've create ID card and driving license which contain your real identity.
 
I only hide my financial data because I don't want to get a fake friend or get a problem with many people.

There's Tor network, explain to me how you can trace someone location if he's using Tor network for anything?

If you want to use this forum privately, you can [Guide] Use Bitcointalk (more) privately (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5445548.0) you can achieve complete anonymous after next few years later.

Total anonymity would have been possible in those days when there was no society or publicly provided amenities that required an identity. These days staying completely anonymous is not possible unless you decide to move to a secluded place and choose to stay without the internet, only eating what you grow or kill.

Rather than wanting to stay completely anonymous which is possible, some people who want to stay away from the eyes of the government have taking up other identity (the identity of other people) and have all documents in the names of these other identities too. It may work for sometime, if you are careful enough not to raise any suspicion.

For bitcoin to increase your anonymity, use a mixer or mixing service.

Bitcoin users can best give you advice on staying pseudo-anonymous with bitcoin, you can achieve this by:

• Avoiding KYC/AML compliant exchanges
• Running your own node over Tor
• Keeping your cold storage wallet off the internet
• Not linking your offline identity with your bitcoin addresses
• Using change addresses.

Bitcoin helps with financial privacy. For the others, research on throwaway phone numbers and emails, also check up privacy email services.

- Jay -

I agree with most of the above and this is a nice check-list you provided.
However, I'd be very careful with the statement "Bitcoin helps with financial privacy" <- I'd go as far as to say for 95+% of Bitcoin users this is not true, actually the opposite. As soon as you buy from a KYC exchange or get your identity linked in any other way with your BTC, you are more transparent than ever before.
With the right measures, like the ones you mentioned above, this can be turned,. But without, Bitcoin is in-itself not private at all with its open-ledger and the complete visibility of all transactions ever made, including the funds sent and senders and recipients' addresses.

It's tough to remain anonymous these days. You have to be careful wherever you have to use personal information online. Do not create a Social Media account with accurate data: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other platform. Never use factual information. If you gamble in casinos, Avoid KYC Required casinos. There are a bunch of NON-KYC Casinos. Not sure how reliable they are. Do your own research before you sign up for those casinos. Most Non-KYC Casinos do not have licenses. You have to be careful with that.

Do not use Centralized exchange if you can. If you submit KYC in Centralized exchanges, you have already leaked your Identity online. Almost all of us use Centralized exchanges to buy or sell our Bitcoin for fiat. That's why I said it's tough to remain anonymous these days. But if you have alternatives. You are the lucky one.

1. Use strong IP masking, like Tor.
2. Stay away from any Centralised exchanges.
3. Use Bitcoin Mixers.

The only way the government can get its hands on your information is through the help of centralized crypto exchanges because all centralized exchanges must abide by the law, they are running their businesses because they are permitted, it's easier for them to betray their customers and give up the customers information, starting from identity information and home addresses, KYC is very dangerous and unsafe if we think about it very well.

alot of sponsored people love to scare people into using their services.

heres a few hard facts that debunk their narratives
they mainly try to use china as a prime example

china has been promoted as a surveillance state. where its been promoted that china is a one bank system and government are watching everyone in china..
that is completely false and illogical on many levels

china have lots of banks and payment services. most owned by private businesses. also london has more camera's than chinas main city.. and im sorry to burst some bubbles but there are no wire fences or prison warden turrets with gunman watching chinese rice paddy workers, office workers, or fishermen around china
china is too huge to have politicians sat at computers or in turrets watching everyone
again britain has more turrets then china does

so dont believe the idiots that get their info from fox new types of sources.

what you will find however is that BUSINESSES watch THEIR CUSTOMERS and they have to report suspicious customers to authorities

so the key thing is
a. avoid telling too much to businesses about yourself
b. avoid large value transactions through unregulated services then being sent to regulated services
c. dont do things that are like waving a red flag shouting that you want to hide

(b) is the important part. by acting suspicious by promoting yourself as a hider. you will actually get noticed more and put onto watch lists which businesses share.

make yourself appear insignificant, unnoticed
most watchlists are of large value items that have been mixed. they only find larger value items significant enough to prompt an investigation because the time and effort and cost of an investigation means its not worth pursuing the small value stuff

(heck even scammers know this. knowing a victims costs of going to court are over $1k scammers that only steal a few dollars or hundreds know victims wont waste time trying to trace and sue a scammer)

regulators dont take someone to court for just one $90 theft. they have bigger fish to fry

so make yourself insignificant, not even worth looking at. dont make yourself notable or shout that you are trying purposefully to hide. just blend into the crowd. not become famous

the more you reveal about yourself the more famous/infamous you become

regulators IN REAL WORLD regulations and policies ACTUALLY DO list that customers of businesses that use mixers should be treated as suspicious by the business. so that right there (research it) shows using mixers will get you watched..
also listed are AEC which are currency networks designed to enhance anonymity. such as dash/monero/lightning
find another way. dont use services/systems that promote that they are designed specifically to hyper anonymise you. as those services will be the things that get you watched. use services/systems designed for other functions. but as a unadvertised side effect just happen to change taint handling of users funds

It is not possible to be completely anonymous unless you are not using any devices such as phones or computers and are not participating in any social platforms, your identity will be guaranteed. But with today's society, all of that is tied to us on a daily basis, I don't believe someone wouldn't use any centralized platform.



We need to admit this, most people don't like centralized exchanges for many reasons but most of us use them, they are almost indispensable for us if we want to invest in bitcoin.

Well, i don't have much to say.

But i think you wouldn't want to be anonymous while dealing with country own data, (e.g - creating of bank account,  national identification numbers, House address and others...) .

In terms of internet, anonymous would be a little bit difficult because of gmail, KYC verifications and more,
Even if so many people has fall into creating multiple or fake gmail accounts, face verification has started coming into the picture.

Don't be too showy with all of your life happenings in social media. You don't imitate those people that keeps on bragging their achievements, things, vacations and other things. And only register to websites that you're really using because if you sign for random websites and that includes your main email, you'll be swarmed by scam emails that you might fall because of how scary their message about your "dirty little secrets". That's how they manipulate their victims and scares them as if they really know what you do but in reality, those are just scary you and tries you if you're gonna fall. For email, I've read that the most suggested one is to use protonmail.

This is a very complicated thing to do, it's a crazy thing in my opinion, I think if you don't register anything on social media and you don't use your personal data to enter the internet world but you have the identity of the country's residents, which are almost all in those days the government stores it through the internet network, so in my opinion it's quite impossible, unless you don't have an identity either in citizenship status or whatever and what is certain is that you will have very difficult access to facilities that must use personal data.

A reliable hacker they always have personal data that can be said they are more anonymous than ordinary people who say they are anonymous, I think you can't do everything anonymously as you expect unless you are able to manipulate personal data.

And yet another user who could vastly benefit from the vast amount of knowledge that would be compiled and discuss if the forum were to house a Cybersecurity & Privacy board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5434404.msg61581530#msg61581530).

Achieving anonymity and privacy with peace of mind that you're doing it right requires a lot of research. It's a personal experience and it varies from person to person based on their threat model (who are you protecting yourself from?) and their knowledge-base (what practices you know of, what you can comprehend and what you are capable of employing). Discussion helps to learn more about both of these topics, which is why I am hoping the aforementioned board is added.

To answer your post, two basic rules:
1. Never share your personal information online unless you absolutely need to. If you do absolutely need to, do so in a secure environment that is away from where you'd like to remain anonymous.
2. Never upload sensitive files to third party services unless you are okay with the potential for eyes other than your own viewing these files.

Some privacy-enhancing technologies include:
- Linux: While there are a vast amount of linux distributions out there, varying in their security/privacy hardening out-of-the-box, almost all popular Linux distributions beat Windows and Mac OS when it comes to privacy.
- VPN: Even a VPN is not enough in some circumstances these days, however a VPN can help to hide your day to day internet usage from your ISP and protect your IP from services online by passing traffic through their servers. Look for a non-logging VPN with a reputation for privacy-first. A bad VPN would make using one redundant.
- Tor: If you need another layer of security, using Tor over VPN is a good way to enhance your anonymity.
- Firefox: Firefox is great because you can learn to harden it further than just in the settings page. There are also some browsers which have forked Firefox and have hardened them so that they're more privacy friendly out of the box. Privacy from tracking is dependent on your browser!

Avoid google and services using big tech to preserve your data and privacy further. It's a hit to convenience though there are almost always just-as-good solutions to google services that are much better for your privacy.

I don’t know, we have to have internet access for various stuff these days. You have entire bank account at your finger tips, you have entire social squad one message away and entire universe information at tip of one click.

Are we going to be anonymous in any sense you think?

Pick any category from the above you will have to submit mandatory cookies to the site for enhancing user experience. Know how, they will always capture your location data, personalised cookies and they will tailor all of your data in no time!

You can’t be private over an internet.

You can just stay secure, alert and safe over internet. That’s all.

That is not a direct influence of Bitcoin but from the use of 3rd party services. Bitcoin keeps you pseudo-anonymous, if you use an exchange and submit your private details, you break that anonymity yourself.

Addresses have no identity linked to them. Transparency does not break your pseudo-anonymity.

- Jay -

First of all we should understand from which device if it is a PC or a smartphone, because generalizing is easy to answer a little less.  But suppose both cases.  If you use a pc, the best solution is to flash the Tails linux distribution image onto a usb stick, with this you are already far ahead in terms of security since it only connects under tor and leaves no trace on the pc it comes used.

Instead let's assume that you use a smartphone, the first thing to do is get yourself a google pixel and install GrapheneOs this is an excellent fork of Android but super privacy friendly.  Then install only open source foss applications and navigate under the tor network or at least VPN, from F-droid you can find Invizible pro which is an excellent tool if set correctly.  Other indications, use google services or other companies that sell your data as little as possible.  Try to self-host as many services as possible.  Use aliases for email.  Use voip or SIM numbers from other countries.  And get yourself a full node for Bitcoin.

I fine this statement to be contradicting since we may not have experts in anonymousity and even if you try to bypass using the VPNif the fed want to know or identify an individualtheir could go extra length ansmd use whatever tools that is availableto link an identity, the Internet is not a free zone, so long as you make connection some of your datas are already linked it may not be available to the public but then third party can have access to it usi g the right tool and laws.
 
Of a true the is no complete anonymous anywhere so for that you need to keep a clean sheet all over the internet, and pay your taxes and stay off every form of irregularities, that way you have nothing to fear concerning you identity.

Dont get the point wrong, you can be anonymous in some form such as Bitcoin storage on a cold wallet but then if you get connected to any exchange you already lost rhat privacy it can onky exist on a stirckly p2p level.

Thanks! This is a good little write up here. I just saw that the US Government is actually trying to outlaw the use of a private VPN punishable by a million dollar fine and 10 years in prison with this tik tok legislation they are trying to push that though and take away all your privacy away basically. Sad times we are living in. They are after complete contol.

My advice for staying anonymous is have 2 separate computers. One of them should be dirty environment where you are allowed to open links, connect external devices like phones, sd cards, open emails. This one can be used for surfing unknown sites, gambling, downloading torrents.
Your second computer should be as clean as possible so no external devices unless those devices were only ever connected to the clean PC and nothing else. That's where you have your wallets, pictures and documents and where you don't install games or watch movies.

Keep your email addresses separate as well. Don't mix the address you use for various forums with the ones used with your bank.

When you pay with bitcoin on sites you don't want to expose your addresses to, and don't want to link your name with a bitcoin address, purchase a gift card with bitcoin, which can be done anonymously and use the card code in store.

Another mixing related topic well, I am interested in such type of discussions. I have strong views on it if you really care about privacy then bro you need to mix your Bitcoins. Anonymous operating requires Mixing and you need to operate in such a way if you are facing some law enforcement restrictions. Avoid Exchanges if you want to be anonymous and you can now go for the P2P system for converting the fiat into crypto and vice versa. I was reading so much feedback on this topic, and some of the suggestions and recommendations are fabulous but I would like to suggest some tips here some of the main points are already recommended above still I would like to repeat them for their potential enforcement.

► Mix your Bitcoins/Cryptocurrencies
► Use P2P platforms
► Use VPN
► Use separate emails for crypto activities
► Use pseudonym (Greatly Efficient for Anonymity)

I don't think these recommendations alone are effective enough, but at least it achieves the minimum.
It is not easy to choose the party to whom we will hand over our personal data, given that it is not easy to use the Internet in complete anonymity. It is very important to know what information we will share with any site we will use, including navigation data. And given that no one can read the privacy terms on every site, it is better to rely on the most reliable sites in terms of the number of users and ratings.
It is more unfortunate that people do not care about this despite the frequent cases of suspected misuse of data, especially on social media platforms.

This is a fantastic post, thanks for the info! I also agree with you that the aforementioned board should be added! Today I feel that it is more important than ever and I don't think that I should even need to look so far as to make the post here to get this info, it should be readily available. Thanks man! Cheers to anonymity

I think there is a lot of info on the internet about it. The best way is to stay away from social media, use the TOR browser or/and VNP, buy SIM cards that are not in your name, and use crypto through a mixer so your transactions won't be traced.

But I won't recommend doing this stuff if you want to commit a crime using crypto because it's giving crypto a bad reputation it doesn't deserve.

to be precise being anonymous in your transactions can greatly benefit you in terms of decision making and having no interference in whatever you will do or decide to do. the disadvantage is that, due to 3rd party services that mostly lets you cash out your money, will start to get suspicious once you are constantly making transactions even if it is a little amount. they will start to monitor you and give you warning, and then ask you where does your money come from.

being anonymous in terms of bitcoin is only temporary, and everyone knows that fact. i have never seen or heard someone who doesn't comply to KYC in every way, since mostly all the complaints are the ones who are done doing those verification process.

Maybe there will always be a way to do this. but I think being completely anonymous is really hard. but if we do it carefully and patiently then of course it can be done. but that means we can't be careless in every activity we do when surfing the internet. and perhaps many have succeeded in doing this (in complete anonymity) for example like the creator of bitcoin himself. but lately even the use of VPN is banned in some countries. so things have become more and more difficult.

You can reach a high level of privacy on the internet but being completely anonymous seems like a very difficult goal to achieve, after all your ISP tracks everything you do online, and if you try to avoid that tracking with the use of a VPN then now the VPN provider can track everything you do anyway.

Now many VPNs claim to not keep records but this has to be a lie, but even if it was true this is just the first step, you will also need to find a way to buy and sell bitcoin anonymously without having to go through KYC, and this is becoming more difficult by the day.

There are lots of tutorials on Youtube and on the internet in general about becoming anonymous online. There's no need to ask here.
Here are my tips:
1.Stay away from Google and the other big tech. Never create a Google account. Use Duckduckgo instead of Google search.
2.Run a VPN over an RDP, over another VPN, over Tor, over another VPN. Good luck with this. ;D
3.Use Protonmail, instead of the big email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.
4.Never share anything about yourself online. This is common sense, but whatever. ;D
5.Never download anything and never click on suspicious links.
6.Use a privacy-oriented browser like Firefox. There are even anti-detect browsers like Dolphin Anty, but they are used for other purposes.

If you never use a KYC compliant exchange, you never need to submit your personal details and never comply with KYC in every way. There are alternatives to those centralized exchanges so it is possible for anyone who wants to to protect their privacy.

When you comply with even one KYC process, your privacy is already exposed, this cannot be undone, but the more random platforms with your details the higher risk of it being used for malicious activities.

- Jay -

Oh, I get it, dude! In a reality where our every byte is scrutinized and big bro's practically breathing down our necks, keeping our personal deets and interweb adventures on the QT is like a Herculean task. But hey, I've got some slick tricks up my cybersleeve

Let's kick it off with the ABCs. Sport a bulletproof VPN to disguise your IP and lock down your online tomfoolery. Whip up crazy strong, never-seen-before passwords for all your accounts, and go the extra mile with two-factor authentication when it's on the table.

For all you Bitcoin trailblazers, get jiggy with a mixing service to muddy the waters of your transactions and maintain their hush-hush status. If you're all about that privacy life, Monero's your go-to crypto for flying under the radar.

But wait, there's a cherry on top! Wanna push your anonymity game to the max? Slap on a phony name and address for your online alter egos. Sure, it's a smidge goofy, but who can resist the allure of an epic alias?

Today, due to the needs of life, most of us are forced to use technology devices, online services, etc., so it is completely impossible to hide our identity. I believe that even companies like Apple claim to respect their users' privacy but still secretly collect our data in a more sophisticated way after being detected. User data is something they can earn a lot of money on, they will never ignore it easily. As long as we depend on government-generated products and services, anonymity is not possible.

I agree with these, technology and internet has been transforming to be of necessity for majority of people. Most of the activities in our daily lives involves the use of at least one gadget and with the use of internet. So with these, it would be very hard to make yourself be completely anonymous. But there are still ways so that you can be as anonymous as you can get online. A lot has been suggested here, but for me personally, I could not see myself to be completely anonymous any part of my life. I have been somehow dependent of devices and internet; it would be hard to put an effort to do these things. What I am doing is keeping all my internet footprint to be contained in a small circle like having my social media be only for those close to me. Also, majority of services that is offered online requires personal data so it is somehow impossible to use this without using your real identity.

It's important to understand what degree of anonymity you want to maintain. Are we talking about black hat hacker anonymity? Is it something that a person who trades on dark net requires?
Are we talking about the normal anonymity of a typical user of this forum? Are we trying to hide our investment from the government? Are we evading taxes?

The above is very important because one person will only want to avoid tracking cookies and KYC exchanges while someone else will want to protect themselves from being hacked and I don't mean phishing but a person taking control of your computer.

For your basic needs a privacy browser like brave or firefox with privacy addon + a firewall and a VPN should be enough. You can go a step further and use TOR, but this is going to make things much slower due to redirecting.

You can take another step and use Linux, then you can take another step and keep all the important files on an external drive that you unplug when it's not being used. This greatly increases security as the hacker will not be able to download your stuff. They will never know when you decide to plug the safe drive, which makes it very difficult for them.

Another step would be to have an internal server and connect through it with important files being on another server that is in a local network, each with its own firewall, so that hackers don't know which computer is which and spend additional time attacking a client PC that can get disconnected from the network at any moment.

I would guess that none of that is really a "must" if you are a regular person. I mean even paying taxes is a must if you want to have a normal life, avoiding that could be a lot more possible and can be easily done but why would you do that, why would you want to put yourself at risk.

Imagine spending years trading and maybe even profiting and one day government figures you out and now you have to pay ten times more than what you can afford, how would that be? That is why I believe that we shouldn't really have any issues like this, it should be a lot better in order to continue living a normal life. Just ignore all the anonymous actions and be out in the public, and you should be having zero issues about it.

In the digital age, where people can easily snoop on you, being anonymous is super important. If you want to beef up your online anonymity, you should look into some tech stuff like Linux, VPNs, and Tor. Linux is way better for privacy than the boring old Windows or Mac OS. VPNs can help you hide what you do online from your internet company and others. But don't just pick any old VPN. Make sure it's trustworthy and doesn't keep logs.

If you want to stay safe online, using Tor over VPN can be a great idea. Don't go sharing your personal info unless you absolutely have to, and never upload anything sensitive to third-party sites. If you're looking for a browser that respects your privacy, Firefox is the way to go. You can even beef up its security by changing settings and using plugins. And don't trust big tech companies like Google blindly. Always be on the lookout for alternative solutions to safeguard your privacy.

Since I started understanding a little bit about sovereignty in Bitcoin context and extrapolating to other contexts, I quickly acknowledge that information is now not only power, money, control, but a weapon that can be used in quite a few envoironments and domains of life. In this regard, I consider reamining anonymous as important as keeping our savings in Bitcoin.

As already mentioned, privacytools.io is an awsome resource and I must also include the so called "degoogling" as one of the most important steps for anonimity and privacy! There is even a sub reddit dedicated to this subject of deglooging ourselves! You have guides, tools and much more to help in the process!

It's difficult at the moment to be completely anonymous but even if it's like that of course there are still some paths that can still be crossed there especially for something like this there are still some that can be tricked.
Currently there are still some platforms that are non kyc and like @hd49728 there are still some platforms now that can be used to be truly anonymous.
Even though in the end we still have to provide information about ourselves but for some reason like bitcoin things like this can still be anticipated.

Maintaining complete anonymity while browsing websites can be challenging. While it is possible to maintain anonymity when using crypto, achieving overall anonymity is difficult, particularly when using social media platforms. To achieve anonymity, it is advisable to use a VPN or the Tor browser to conceal your real identity from the internet.

The fact is that in the world of cryptocurrencies, it is best to try to preserve your anonymity as much as possible.
This applies to projects, forums, chats and the like.

But the fact is that sooner or later you will want to withdraw money, and in reality you will have to report to the tax service anyway.
There you, having provided full information about yourself, will have to tell how you earned each dollar withdrawn.
Therefore, in modern realities, it is impossible to earn and spend completely anonymously.

One doesn't have to be a criminal to remain anonymous on the internet, it is very essential to preserve your privacy for your own sake, it saves you from lots of problems, no one will be able to use identification without your approval, and no one can sell your data, this is what Bitcoin does for everyone but even at that, Bitcoin is not fully anonymous, they are pseudonymous which means every transaction you did on the network will be public but no one can trace the transaction to any identity, this is where bitcoin gives freedom to people and avoid others from putting an eye on your activities.

I clearly stated that this does not matter for 95% of folks using BTC for the reasons I mentioned.
Yes, Bitcoin is pseudonymous, however if you get funds, from someone that got the funds from someone who's identity is linked to their public address, then it will be very easy with some chain analysis and some effort from a government or powerful institution to make a link to you.

It's nice that when used with the right precautions Bitcoin can be as private as cash with lots of advantages, but it's even more important to realize this does not apply if you don't know exactly what you are doing.
So generally, the current state of non-fungibility for any BTC is a major concern imho and can be dangerous if you promote the narrative that just by using Bitcoin it automatically increases your financial privacy.

Honestly, I am quite pessimistic about my identity because I believe that even government agencies, banks, and schools are illegally abusing our identities. What I'm trying to do is keep my assets as private as possible, and that's part of the reason I use bitcoin. In addition to using it to invest for profit, I also use bitcoin to hide my assets because I don't believe in any government. One day they will be in trouble, they will also come and try to rob us of our money, and I need to do that to protect myself.

It is good to maintain a complete anonymous online but it could have it own obstacles when it comes to identity of who you are. If you take a look at Bitcoin Mixing, many persons may decide to mix there Bitcoin to enable anonymous transaction where people will not be able to trace them or know who they are as an institution or individual.
 It is good to maintain anonymousity online to avoid been on a watch list. VPN had really help a lot for people to stay unknown online and not be able to trace them or there location.

IN cryptocurrency, we can find this privacy and anonymous much better than in the real life condition. But. If in the real world, this will be difficult, especially when everything is under the control of the government where they control us. Even anonymity is now very lacking, even private parties or certain parties can easily get our data including personal numbers (phone). And this data leak happened not just once, it even happened frequently. So indeed our privacy here is really lacking, having an electronic ID also provides easier access to illegal things and they can easily see our ID.

If it's in the world of social media, I'm not sure someone who wants to be anonymous uses social media. because most people who use social media actually publish themselves indirectly, which actually injures their privacy. But they actually enjoy it. If it's related to finances, indeed we should have a very strict level of privacy in order to increase security. However, for banks or other fields, this might not really work.

Tread93....I just chuckled audibly in the lonely silence of my dungeon.  The first suggestion that popped into my head within a millisecond of reading your question was "Don't form relationships with potentially risky people from an internet forum".  You know what I'm talking about, and I'm in no way criticizing you.  I just thought that would be an enormous anonymity eraser and nothing you do to protect your privacy in the context of bitcoin/crypto thereafter would be meaningful if one or more people could dox you if they were facing molten lead being poured down their ass(es), you know?

Man, it's late and I haven't slept.  Did any of that make sense?  And how the hell did Satoshi do it?  That's always been the big mystery that seems like it shouldn't be a mystery at all given enough detective work.

Yes Tor and VPNs are really crucial in this day and age. Someone was telling me about a browser with VPNs built in today, I can't quite remember the name of it but peaked my curiosity. Something like that could be useful the for everyday average joe thats just getting into BTC/ Crypto/ wants to just have a bit more security. Because lets face it Google doesn't seem to be very secure at all, i'm not to sure about Bing. Firefox actually has some elaborate controls and features that you can implement making it one of the most viable browsing options to my knowledge.