Bitcoin is not anonymous

[Trader Steve]

This, and if this is to complicated, just send some coins to another wallet through a mixer and if anyone asks, just say somebody you were selling something to gave you the mixer input address as there payment address.

Did you mean to say:

"...and if this is too complicated, just send some coins to another wallet through a mixer and if anyone asks, just say somebody you were buying something from gave you the mixer input address as their payment address." ??

[fergalr]

ZOMGBBQ breakin news!!

I was surprised at the amount of information they were able to gather from "passive" analysis.  I'm assuming all they used was the block chain. And google?

Anyway after reading it I will take even further steps to protect anonymity.

Hi a63ntsm1th,

The analysis was done almost exclusively with the block chain, and googling addresses, and scraping addresses from the web.  We also looked a little at the faucet service, as a proof of concept.
I'm one of the authors, if you have any further questions.

(see also discussion here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31662.0)