[2017-08-20] Bitcoin-accepting sites leave cookie trail that crumbles anonymity

[Riddikulo]

This is my first post in Press section. So hope everything is ok!


Merchants share too much tracking information? Colour us un-surprised

Bitcoin transactions might be anonymous, but on the Internet, its users aren't – and according to research out of Princeton University, linking the two together is trivial on the modern, much-tracked Internet.

In fact, linking a user's cookies to their Bitcoin transactions is so straightforward, it's almost surprising it took this long for a paper like this to be published.

The paper sees privacy researcher Dillon Reisman and Princeton's Steven Goldfeder, Harry Kalodner and Arvind Narayanan demonstrate just how straightforward it can be to link cookies to cryptocurrency transactions:




More read here:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2017/08/20/bitcoins_anonymity_easy_to_penetrate/

[Carlton Banks]

Wow, do Bitcoiners still use operating systems and browsers in a way that allow browser cookies to persist like that? It's been several years since I bought anything from a website, with BTC or fiat, when I don't use a fresh browser that I just throw away straight after

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/dispvm/

[gentlemand]

I would've thought this was blindingly obvious. Most people will have completely blown their privacy long ago. It really doesn't take much at all to breach it. Everything I've bought with BTC was linked my address anyway so when the brown shirts come for me they won't have much of a task.