Privacy for bitcoin transactions

[OcTradism]

Bitcoin was born to control our own banks and protect our privacy when we move our funds.

There are some ways to increase your transaction privacy:
- Use change address in non-custodial wallets
- Use Coin Join transactions
- Use reliable mixing service like Chip Mixer
- Use some good altcoins with the suggested topic from theymos.

Everything need to be practice before you can make it correct. In this case, make it correct to increase your privacy.

There are two explorers that you can use to check privacy of your transactions and from results you can think of other ways and improvements to make your transactions more private.
- Blockchair.com (type hash of your transaction at the end of the link)
- Blockstream.info (type hash of your transaction at the end of the link)
You can check this transaction: 8d49f7e2156da6b2dfb5e0e9e86c8d878c96a0dd4674c64dea37c748a37aac63

They have documents:
- Blockchair.com's privacy-o-meter's document
- Bitcoin privacy improves with BTCPay servers P2EP implementation (it is not a document for privacy analysis that is used on blockstream.info but you can read and get something)

I often use the blockchair.com because they classify transactions into 3 groups (from privacy scores) and 4 types (from transaction types):

score — transaction privacy score where 0 is the worst score, and 100 is the best score

Type code    Description
CB    Coinbase transaction
N1    Transaction with just 1 output (either a sweep to another address by the same owner, or a transfer using a "send everything I have" option)
N2    Transaction with 2 outputs — most common in wallets — where one of the outputs is the recipient, and the other one is the change address
NN    Transaction with more than 2 outputs — most common in exchanges and services that use payout batching

- Heuristics
- Coin Join
- CoinJoin: Bitcoin privacy for the real world
- [Guide] Decent mixing methods

[pooya87]

There are two explorers that you can use to check privacy of your transactions and from results you can think of other ways and improvements to make your transactions more private.

you do that and you no longer have any privacy since those explorers can easily record your "fingerprint" that includes your IP and the transactions that you search in their centralized platforms. that way they can also link different transaction outputs (aka coins) that weren't even linked before.

additionally their report is not that good either. for example blockchair will rate a transaction low if it sends the entire "balance" to a new address whereas that address could be a mixer for example!

[mk4]

Word of advice, if you're going to use block explorers, at the very least at least use Tor browser when doing so for better privacy. Not sure if blockchain.com works well on Tor(I assume there would be a crap ton of traffic lights and buses involved), but Blockstream's explorer does work well on Tor.

[Maus0728]

~snip~
you do that and you no longer have any privacy since those explorers can easily record your "fingerprint" that includes your IP and the transactions that you search in their centralized platforms. that way they can also link different transaction outputs (aka coins) that weren't even linked before.

additionally their report is not that good either. for example blockchair will rate a transaction low if it sends the entire "balance" to a new address whereas that address could be a mixer for example!

True. If someone really wants to optimize the privacy of their bitcoin transaction, they should start building their own fully validating node that runs through the TOR network or that is connected using a VPN to avoid giving information that may be subjected to your physical location.

Also, running a fully validating node does not only give you a full control or autonomy to your coins but also good level of privacy which means that you can have the capacity to know whether your transaction has been broadcasted, valid or confirmed because you now have the copy of the transactions without relying on someone else's third party services.

[ololajulo]

Word of advice, if you're going to use block explorers, at the very least at least use Tor browser when doing so for better privacy. Not sure if blockchain.com works well on Tor(I assume there would be a crap ton of traffic lights and buses involved), but Blockstream's explorer does work well on Tor.

How can you be safe on TOR against hackers especially with bitcoin transaction?

[mk4]

Word of advice, if you're going to use block explorers, at the very least at least use Tor browser when doing so for better privacy. Not sure if blockchain.com works well on Tor(I assume there would be a crap ton of traffic lights and buses involved), but Blockstream's explorer does work well on Tor.

How can you be safe on TOR against hackers especially with bitcoin transaction?

It's not for security per se, but privacy. There's a huge difference between both. You should run things through Tor just so a certain bitcoin address or tx can't be tied to your home IP address by these block explorer websites.

Take a look at pooya87's reply.

[20kevin20]

You'd pretty much do exactly the opposite thing by trying to check your privacy through block explorers. The thing is, it's quite hard to keep your BTC unlinked to your identity (or at least to sufficient information to connect the dots) all the time without mistakenly leaking crucial data about your devices and location.

Having your privacy up as close to 100% as possible would mean absolutely nothing if, by clicking the wrong button, you mistakenly open up a block explorer with a transaction of yours. As the ledger is transparent, one little mistake would make your entire privacy on the blockchain poof in no time - and be written in the ledger forever out there.

Take it another way: imagine you have a very important text from history that has a coded word in it nobody ever understood. Finding what exactly the codename was means uncovering the entire text and understanding it all. Same goes for your Bitcoins' path. Finding the smallest information about you (IP, orders, exchange accounts, browser fingerprint - anything) means possibly uncovering your entire history.

If you want maximum privacy, the average Joe would most likely have to first of all reconsider the OS they're using cryptocurrencies with. Install a FOSS Linux distro, go through a few CoinJoins (or mixers), throw your balance from one address to another a few dozen times to try erasing the mixed history (some people do have a problem with them) and, finally, move it all to a fresh Tails OS Electrum wallet and only use that one from that point on. From time to time, it may not be a bad idea at all to throw your balance again in a mixer (or CoinJoin) just to make sure you continue making your BTC path a pain in the arse for anyone who's willing to go after it. Tails OS has system-wide Tor active, which drastically improves your privacy.

Word of advice, if you're going to use block explorers, at the very least at least use Tor browser when doing so for better privacy. Not sure if blockchain.com works well on Tor(I assume there would be a crap ton of traffic lights and buses involved), but Blockstream's explorer does work well on Tor.

Turning JavaScript (press the shield in the upper-right corner of the browser and modify security level to Safest) off is even better. It does mess up with most websites though.

[mk4]

Turning JavaScript (press the shield in the upper-right corner of the browser and modify security level to Safest) off is even better. It does mess up with most websites though.

It sure does with most. Tried this with both Blockchain.com and Blockstream.info and fortunately both works completely fine. A bit worse of a UI effect on Blockchain.com, but everything is still comprehensible. QR code isn't showing up on Blockchain.com though.

[notblox1]

Turning JavaScript (press the shield in the upper-right corner of the browser and modify security level to Safest) off is even better. It does mess up with most websites though.

Using No-script extension helps with that, but it can be to restrictive for regular users.
I agree that if you are not using Tor or vpn, you can forget about your privacy.
If you don't care about your privacy now, you will care about it one day but it may be to late than.

[mk4]

Using No-script extension helps with that, but it can be to restrictive for regular users.

How so? It just requires a few clicks on the Tor browser to activate it.

Shield icon > Advanced Security Settings > Safest

and that's pretty much it. You can use this solely just when you need that extra privacy oomph, like when looking up transactions.

[philipma1957]

  Privacy is nice , but know the laws of your country.
Trying to hide yourself may be a crime in your country.