confirmations on change address

[flower1024]

hi,

just a small question:

if i send a transaction the change goes to another address (i am speaking about reference implementation).
why aren't there any confirmations needed? it seems to be a normal transaction.

what would happen if i use a wallet (e.g. blockchain.info) and use another partys address as a change address. would he need to wait for confirmations (i guess yes, because i dont see a way to distinguish between change and "real" transaction?

[Revalin]

Waiting for confirmations isn't a network requirement.  It's just a trust issue.

You can automatically trust your own change.  You're not going to double-spend attack yourself, so there's no need to wait.

The "change" has no technical difference from the "payment".  It's just two outputs.  For example, consider these two transactions:

Address A has 1 BTC
You pay 0.75 BTC to B
You receive 0.25 BTC change to C

Address A has 1 BTC
You pay 0.75 BTC to B and 0.25 BTC to C
There is no change left over

The only difference is in the first, address C was automatically generated by your client; in the second, you entered it manually.  From a network and blockchain perspective these two transactions are identical, bit for bit.