uBlock and uBlock Origin are not the same thing. Thankfully, the link you have include is for uBlock Origin's github, which is the one you want to use. uBlock is essentially a rogue developer who has moved more and more away from being a good ad blocker and more and more towards pandering to business and advertisers to generate profit for himself. It steals the work of others and allows advertiser to pay for their ads to not be blocked.

uBlock Origin is the one which remains free of third party influence, and is the one you should choose.

KeePass and Bitwarden are open source. Presumably you trust your (probably closed source) operating system and your browser not to steal your passwords. Why not open source password managers?

The majority of higher ranked accounts are accounts which got there before the merit system was introduced, and so there are still plenty of higher ranked accounts which are owned and operated by spammers. Only a minority of higher ranked accounts have had to consistently make good posts to earn their rank. Since accounts are incredibly rarely (if ever) banned for spamming (provided they don't also break some other rule), even if they are having hundreds of their posts deleted, then this isn't going to change any time soon.

Spam can occur on any campaign, regardless of the ranks it accepts or the project it is advertising, if the manager allows it to happen.

Wait, what? Matching signatures and avatars!? Like who?

They need to stop advertising their "2 BTC a day" unverified account withdrawals then, as it is essentially false advertising. If something as simple as an IP address change can trigger their automatic "suspicions", then considering anybody can be assigned a new IP address at any time by their ISP, or the same user will have two completely different IP address if they access their account on WiFi or on mobile, then essentially any and every "unverified" account can be flagged for mandatory KYC at any time. Their whole "2 BTC for unverified accounts" is a lie when they can simply force you to verify anytime they like, and steal your coins if you don't.

OP isn't the first to be in this situation, and he won't be the last. Binance also aren't the first exchange to pull this scam, and also won't be the last. It's a shame that people never heed the warnings of others though. It usually takes someone to suffer a loss of their own coins before they realize just how scammy all the big centralized exchanges are. Even people who are verified and think "This would never happen to me" can and often do suddenly wake up to find that their chosen exchange has shut down their account because of some unspecified reason, they don't like where your coins come from or where they go, they don't like your activity, they want more info, they've banned your country, etc., etc.

It's ridiculous. What counts as "tainted" bitcoin? Anything that has been mixed? Anything that has been traded peer-to-peer? Anything that has been part of a CoinJoin transaction? Anything from a casino? How far back do we look? If you go back far enough, the vast majority of bitcoins in circulation will have been "tainted" in some way. What if I bounce my bitcoin between 10 brand new addresses? Does that make it "clean" again? How about 20 addresses? How about 100? How do I know that bitcoin I am buying completely legitimately won't be declared "tainted" by another exchange for some other obscure reason?

Centralized exchanges are starting to make rules about what their users can and cannot spend their own money on, and who they are and are not allowed to transfer their own money to. It goes against the very idea of bitcoin being decentralized and uncensorable, the very nature of bitcoin, the very thing bitcoin was designed to do. Everyone should be avoiding these exchanges at all costs.

Privacy was the main reason I initially chose to avoid centralized exchanges and do all my trading peer-to-peer, but as time goes on, the list of reasons to avoid CEXs just keeps growing and growing.

No. Don't use it. It makes your privacy worse, not better. Take a look at Opera's Privacy Policy here: https://www.opera.com/privacy


Emphasis mine. They monitor your usage and share that information with ad companies to personalize the ads they target you with. Also take a close look at the "Third parties" section on the privacy policy I linked to. Third party code is included in their products from a variety of companies, including Google and Facebook, the two biggest privacy invading companies out there.

If you are getting something for free, then you are the product. Companies have to make money somewhere or else they will cease to exist. In the case of "free" VPNs, the providers are harvesting and selling your data to any number of third parties.

You could look in to installing an open source operating system such as GrapheneOS or LineageOS. If you don't want to go down that route, then you can use an app such as NetGuard to prevent various Google apps from phoning home all the time.

I'm well aware of that, but that is the statistics for the general population, and we know the vast majority of people are not tech savvy. People who are interested in bitcoin are supposedly interested in privacy and not trusting third parties with all of their information. It is a complete contradiction to be interested in the freedom that bitcoin provides whilst also letting Google monitor everything you do online, every word you search, every page you view, every image you look at, every link you click, every file you download, every post you make.

I don't know which conclusion is worse - that people interested in not trusting third parties with bitcoin have no concept of doing the same with their data, or that the majority of people using bitcoin don't actually care in the slightest about not trusting third parties and use bitcoin only to try to make personal profit. I know which conclusion is more likely, though.

You could use the Orbot app which routes all your mobile data through Tor, and then use a non-spyware browser like Firefox or DuckDuckGo.

You are right of course, but the fact that this is the case is a massive cause for concern and should give people pause before they decide to use Binance (or any other exchange with similarly terrible customer support such as Coinbase).

A company which actually cares about their customers will do the right thing for them in private, without needing any public coercion or announcing how great they are for resolving it. As an example - many years ago I had a piece of computer hardware which failed on the exact day its two year warranty ran out. I emailed the company in question, and got a reply within the hour with a prepaid packing label for me to ship it back to them. Within a week I had received a better part at no cost to me and with a new two year warranty on it, since they no longer stocked the original part. I am now essentially a customer for life with said company, and will preferentially use them even if they are slightly more expensive because of how great their customer service is.

Companies which ignore their users' tickets, send endless automated emails, make them jump through hoops, make unreasonable demands, and only actually bother to attempt to solve the issue when enough noise has been made publicly are not companies we should be using. Such companies obviously don't care about their users - all they care about if their profits. If you can't generate enough community support or visibility with your complaint, then they won't bother to solve it since it won't cost them any other customers. You are essentially relying on the community to like/share/upvote/retweet your complaint enough for it to actually be dealt with.

Combining Tor and VPN together is rarely better than just using Tor alone, but could certainly be much worse.

Connecting to a VPN first and then to Tor means that your VPN essentially becomes your entry guard in to the Tor network. Doing so will hide the fact you are using Tor from your ISP, but it provides no additional security over using Tor alone unless you are concerned about connecting to a malicious Tor entry guard. You can also hide your Tor use from your ISP by using Tor bridges with or without pluggable transports, so a VPN is not necessary in this case.

If you connect to Tor first and then to your VPN, then you have negated the entire point of using Tor as your VPN provider will still be able to see all your traffic unencrypted.

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Can't wait to be shocked yet again at how many people willingly use the Google Chrome browser spyware.

Correct. There are separate buttons for "Send" and "Preview", and only clicking the latter will give you a preview of the addresses you are sending to. Clicking the former gives you a confirmation of the amount and the fee only (and asks for your password if you have one), but not the addresses.

I only use Electrum either in conjunction with a hardware wallet or on a permanently airgapped machine, so I am always forced to confirm my transactions prior to them being broadcast. I would agree that if you are using Electrum as a hot wallet, it would be a good idea to always show the preview window prior to signing.

There is no reason that you would ever need to deposit coins before being allowed to withdraw. Any service asking you to do so is a scam. This applies equally to exchanges, casinos, competitions, doublers, twitter giveaways, etc.

Do not send them any BTC.

It's ridiculous really. If you were moving $10,000 between bank accounts, or transferring to someone else, or paying off a bill, etc., then almost everyone is going to double check the details on the paperwork or the online form. But when it comes to moving a bitcoin or two around, suddenly cutting corners and only checking three or four characters is the norm.

Can you imagine if your fiat bank called you up and said "Sorry, we lost your money because we didn't double check the account number we were sending it to". You'd be up in arms, taking legal action, definitely moving to a different bank. Why should bitcoin be any different?

As you say, unfortunately some people aren't responsible enough to be their own bank.

From the data I have discussed earlier in this thread, 40% of coins passed through mixers come directly from exchange accounts, and more still will come from exchanges via either someone's personal wallet or via another mixer. There is therefore a significant amount of bitcoin from exchanges being mixed. It isn't a frequent occurrence for exchange accounts to be put at risk by this, or else it wouldn't be happening so much.

As LeGaulois says, the desire for privacy and mixing or similar techniques is only going to increase with time. How will exchanges be able to discriminate against "tainted" bitcoin when the vast majority of coins of in existence have been mixed or otherwise anonymized at some point?

It's a scam.

It's a complete rip off of the old cex.io site, which you can see here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200115220940/https://cex.io/

There are dozens of other scam sites using the exact same ripped off site, such as:
https://manibush.com/
https://dentawallet.com/
https://beldexcrypto.com/
https://royal-crypto.icu/

Their site says copyright 2013-2020, but according to WHOIS data was only registered 10 days ago.

Do not deposit any coins - they will be stolen. If you have made an account on this site and have reused a password you use anywhere else, I suggest you go and change it immediately.

Be aware that all the methods described above - entering your seed in to Electrum, in to iancoleman.io, or in to any other wallet - should ideally be done on an offline, airgapped computer. Your seed should never touch an online device, as doing so potentially exposes it to any attackers or any malware which is present on that device and puts your coins at risk.

I would download iancoleman.io from the repository here (https://github.com/iancoleman/bip39), open it on a live OS on an airgapped computer, enter your seed, then find the private key for the address(es) you are interested in.

So because I value my privacy, by your logic I must inherently be up to something shady or immoral? So why do you post under a pseudonym? I'll ask again for your real name, address, and all your email and social media logins. After all, you've just said that privacy is "not needed for normal people". Why won't you share that information? What have you got to hide?

I suppose it makes sense that someone who shills for a privacy invading, centralized scam like BSV doesn't understand why the average person might value their privacy. Perhaps if the world wasn't filled with identity thieves like Craig Wright, some people might be less concerned with keeping their KYC data to themselves.

Because they have essentially confiscated OP's money without his consent and against his will.

Here's what wouldn't be a scam:
Binance let you create an account, but force you to go through KYC before you deposit any coins. If you don't want to go through KYC, you can't use your account and you can't deposit anything.
If after you've deposited coins Binance decide they want you to go through KYC, then if you refuse they will return your coins to the address they were deposited from before closing your account.

Here's what is a scam:
You deposit coins, and Binance freeze your account and say "Give us your documents or we keep your money". The only way this wouldn't be a scam is if it was clearly stated in their ToS, which it isn't. If Binance want KYC on all customers, then they need to stop advertising their unverified "2 BTC daily withdrawal" accounts immediately.

Cash is used by many people, and some of them are criminals. Should we ban it?
The internet is used by many people, and some of them are criminals. Should we ban it?
Tor is used by many people, and some of them are criminals. Should we ban it?
Encryption is used by many people, and some of them are criminals. Should be we ban it?
Mixers are used by many people, and some of them are criminals. Should we ban them?

Just because criminals use a service doesn't mean the service is untrustworthy, immoral, illegal, unnecessary, or unwanted.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, is such a mind-numbingly stupid argument that is beggars belief how often it gets repeated. If you are so unexceptional, so unassuming, so uninteresting, so meek, so pitiful, that you have nothing to fear by letting everybody and their aunt monitor your every action, movement, communication, transaction, then so be it. Please post your real name, social media profiles, email addresses, and passwords to this thread, so we can all take a good look around. Yeah, I didn't think so.

The chance of them responding is essentially zero, and even if they did, they would just give some wishy-washy justification without clearing things up at all. "OP's IP address changed, which triggered our anti-money laundering protocols", or something similar that essentially absolves them of all responsibility.

Lol. What reputation? Binance have pulled moves like this before, and they will again. They've been hacked for coins and they've been hacked for KYC documents. CZ wanted to perform an entire chain re-org to fix the result of their own poor security. Despite all this, they continue to have millions of customers. Another user having 0.5 BTC stolen from them is a drop in the ocean of shady/untrustworthy things that Binance have done. It won't affect their profits, and so they don't care.

This is part of the argument I make when talking to people about why they should care about their online privacy.

Many people say they aren't overly concerned about their online privacy because they either don't think they are doing anything illegal/immoral/wrong/embarrassing/etc. that they want to keep private, or because they don't fear their government using that information against them. That may be the case now, but what about for the next 50 years? Do you trust every future administration/government for the rest of your life? Because they will have access to your data too. Do you trust them not to pass any laws that might make things you are saying or doing now cause issues for you in the future. Do you trust them to use your data against you? What about all the administrations of all the other countries your government shares your data with, and there are many.

There could be any number of laws passed, new governments, global developments, etc., in the rest of your life that will make you wish you paid much closer attention to your online privacy, such as Executive Order 6102. Mixing or otherwise anonymizing your bitcoin is good practice for everyone, regardless of what you are using bitcoin for.