Is there anyway to trace someone by their wallet address?

[eco]

So I'm wondering if my wallet address can be traced to where I am sending and receiving funds?   If I transfer funds from Mt Gox to BTC-e , then will Mt Gox know that I am sending to BTC-e and will BTC-e know that I am sending from Mt Gox from the wallet address?

Or does someone have no idea where the funds have gone from the wallet address?  I'm just curious how anonymous this all truly is.  Thanks.

[crazy_rabbit]

At this point a good google search will answer your question. The short answer would be it's anonymous enough to be untraceable if you're not doing anything illegal. If your doing something illegal, something the government would especially be interested in, then it's probably not as anonymous as you need. (Although you could take special steps to improve your chances)

Of course, never underestimate a bitcointalk.org forum member scorned. If you're thinking about ripping someone off, they might find you anyway.

[eco]

Thank you for the reply. I'm not doing anything illegal and I know that your IP can still be traced, but it sounds like it is anonymous enough for my purposes.  The gov't wouldn't be interested in getting involved for sure...nothing like that.

[BookLover]

Use Tor.  You can even run your bitcoin client through it.

[Abdussamad]

All transaction data is public. You can see an example transaction in blockchain:

https://blockchain.info/tx/6655d7353d8a3f6e162a7b76aa95ac662a17213f9f1e6a6776e3945f60a7e8a6

So as you can see it shows some things like time, amount, sending and receiving address as well as geo location of the IP that relayed the transaction. If you use an online wallet that IP will be the website's not yours.

Anyway theoretically it should be possible to parse this data and match it with other bits of public information like google search results for addresses to deduce who the people behind a transaction are. If you've ever mentioned an address in a public forum like this one you've helped someone do that. Maybe intelligence agencies are already using such programs.

Bottom line is that it is pseudo-anonymous not anonymous.

[Welsh]

Use Tor.  You can even run your bitcoin client through it.

Tor is still traceable by professionals, however if you are remaining anonymous from general bitcoin users, then of course this is always a good step.

But, bitcoin is pretty anonymous anyway, they won't know your name, unless you are using a website which can track your ip and get information from any websites you have signed up with your real name.

If you are not doing anything illegal then there is no need to go these extra steps unless you want to use sites which take note of your ip addres.
But, even then some sites will not allow you to buy from a tor network because of too many ip changes.

So, it depends on what you want to do, if you can afford a VPN service.
 then this is the best option by far.