How Traceable Are Bitcoin Wallet Addresses?

[PinzProp]

So say you give someone your wallet address can they trace which software your using for your wallet? say your using blockchain.info wallet can they see this just from your bitcoin address?

Thanks

[bitllionaire]

You can only trace address an relate them to a person if it has been publicly used for another thing.
For example if you publish your address here and in the future you use it for another private use,someone can relate it to you

[Snipe85]

AFAIK no. You can see addresses using blockchain.info or other sites and you can trace transactions, but you can't see the software used to access them, especially that the same address can be accessed on different wallets, you just need to transfer your private key.

[Snipe85]

Say you reuse the same address for many things and you eventually buy a physical good and the shipper tells someone or leaks the information.

Then of course your address will become linked to your name, but still it won't allow people to see your other addresses and know which software was being used to access them.

[cakir]

If the sender uses a desktop/mobile client etc it's not possible.

But there's a catch. If you're using blockchain.info wallet and if you send bitcoin from that address you can see something like that on the transaction details; "Relayed by IP   Blockchain.info "
That means sender uses blockchain.info's wallet.

[SpanishSoldier]

So say you give someone your wallet address can they trace which software your using for your wallet?

No. Unless you use some special feature provided by the software that is traceable on some block explorer.

say your using blockchain.info wallet can they see this just from your bitcoin address?

No. But, if you are using blockchain.info custom message for transaction, anyone checking that Tx on blockchain.info will invariably know that the address is on blockchain.info wallet.

[shorena]

So say you give someone your wallet address can they trace which software your using for your wallet? say your using blockchain.info wallet can they see this just from your bitcoin address?

Thanks

Not with certainty, but one can make educated guesses. Most wallets handle change in a certain way that might give a hint. A Shared Coin (bc.i's CoinJoin service) TX is also pretty obvious most of the time.

The address alone is certainly not giving anything away. Once you start using it with a wallet however, said wallet might create transactions that are telling a story about the wallet on the blockchain.

Say you reuse the same address for many things and you eventually buy a physical good and the shipper tells someone or leaks the information.

Then of course your address will become linked to your name, but still it won't allow people to see your other addresses and know which software was being used to access them.

Is this your question OP? Whether or not one can link one address to another address within the same wallet?

[Ibelievetruly]

If according to, http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/09/05/follow-the-bitcoins-how-we-got-busted-buying-drugs-on-silk-roads-black-market/ and the tons of other articles done on just how transparent bitcoin really is, along with how that dea officer got busted from blockchain analysis for laundering the bitcoin from silk road, then I'd say:

Bitcoin is 100% tracaeble, much moreso than cash, and in the future when better blockchain analysis programs are made, even transactions that have gone through coinjoin and tumbling dozens of times, will be able to get traced much easier.

[coinpr0n]

I think it's safe to assume that it is possible to get that kind of information just from an address by correlating different sources. It's a matter of more or less difficult.

[ensurance982]

Depends on how your Bitcoin client creates the transaction. Usually there's no way of telling which client you are using. But you could maybe use some statistical and forensic methods and try to determine a specific probability of it being from a certain client....

[Amph]

as  far as i know, there is not 100% protection from traceability, even if you use a good mixer, there is a way to go back to the original address

old article related to this

https://bitcoinhelp.net/know/more/using-bitcoin-anonymously

[GTO911]

You are stupid if you think bitcoin mixers can save your ass. Only cryptonote protocol (Monero) can be said to be truly private at this time

[Beliathon]

They are traceable as hell, the NSA has backdoors in your HARDWARE unless you are using a pre ~1995 machine.
Assume all your communications can be intercepted and behave accordingly.

[Ibelievetruly]

They are traceable as hell, the NSA has backdoors in your HARDWARE unless you are using a pre ~1995 machine.
Assume all your communications can be intercepted and behave accordingly.

That is very true. Consider all computers using Windows and iOS(apple) compromised by the NSA. "On Thursday, Microsoft issued a security advisory admitting that it is “aware of a security feature bypass vulnerability” which “affects all supported releases of Microsoft Windows,” in addition to any non-Microsoft software running on a part of Windows called Secure Channel."



http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/nsa-backdoor-mandates-lead-to-a-computer-security-freak-show-030615.html

[ensurance982]

They are traceable as hell, the NSA has backdoors in your HARDWARE unless you are using a pre ~1995 machine.
Assume all your communications can be intercepted and behave accordingly.

That's not really what this question is about... OP was asking about how well you can follow money flowing between addresses or trying addresses to a certain legal entity (person/company)

[jonald_fyookball]

You can measure taint of a transaction against a certain address, but that only tells you so much.
For example, imagine I send 2 BTC from address "123" to my friend Bob at address "456".  Bob
already has 2 BTC in this address and then sends 4 BTC from "456" to the Silk Road.  This transaction would show as 50% taint relative to my address "123".  So if someone knew my address was tied to my personal identity, all they could see is that my coins were sent to another address which then went to the Silk Road, but they couldn't prove it was actually me who owned address "456". (in this example, it wasn't).

Even 100% taint doesn't prove anything as I could send coins to Bob and he could send only those coins to Silk Road, although someone could still "see" the chain.

The less taint you have, the weaker the link is.

Obtaining more taint with mixing services seems relatively simple, but becomes harder with large amounts of coins.

The only way to prove with certainty that a certain transaction is mine
is if it came directly from an address known to belong to me,
but proof isn't necessarily needed to gain clues about the parties
if other information is present.

[majeis]

The entire transaction ledger is publicly visible, so you'd have to obfuscate it with lots of transactions, but that's kind of pointless. Everything can be seen.

100% traceable on the blockchain, though not entirely easily relateable to a person or ip.

[LiteCoinGuy]

http://coinalytics.co/tools/explorer.html