What info can be gathered using my receiving address btc

[Pippylong20]

Hi Everyone

I recently received some bitcoin from a guy  , he sais he was worried about it being on an exchange, less than $100.

He has since revealed himself to be a bit of a crank and I am now suspicious of his motive.  My question is what information can he gather based on the receiving address I gave him ?

 I sent him a receiving address generated by Trezor 1 wallet , this was a single use address.  I always use new  receiving address when sending btc to wallet.

 Is there a way he can see other transactions or balance using only a receiving address for my wallet ?, 

 The only info I was able to verify is the actual single  transaction on the blockchain.  Is it possible to obtain anything more than this or am I just being paranoid?

Thanks in advance for any responses

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[nc50lc]

Since it's not from a custodial wallet or an exchange, there's not much info he can gather from it alone.
Just keep it "single-use" and once you received funds from it, do not use it again.
Learn to use "coin control" to manually select inputs so you wouldn't use the coins sent to it together with your other UTXO (received transactions)
because that could potentially link that address to your wallet's other addresses.

If you're using Electrum to manage your Trezor's BTC balance, you can freeze the address so any txn that's received through it wont be spent.

[BitMaxz]

You are just too paranoid they don't have control of your private keys so you don't need to be a worry.

My question is what information can he gather based on the receiving address I gave him ?

Balance and transaction you being made and nothing else.

And take note that he can able to see all of your used addresses since you said that you always use a new receiving address if you are going to make a transaction and send all coins all used addresses will be shown on any explorer that is linked on that address.

[Pippylong20]

Great

 I haven't used electrum wallet with trezor yet but will do some reading now on how to freeze that coin

Many Thanks

[nc50lc]

I haven't used electrum wallet with trezor yet but will do some reading now on how to freeze that coin

It's easy, just open the address tab ("View->Show Addresses" to enable the tab).
In the address tab, right click the address and click "Freeze".

Take note that by freezing the address, it's just frozen in that specific client and wallet file.
It can still be spent in other instance of that wallet, say, your Trezor Wallet/Suite app.

I'll just add this: There's a tutorial on how to use use Trezor in Electrum - https://wiki.trezor.io/Apps:Electrum

[o_e_l_e_o]

Take note that by freezing the address, it's just frozen in that specific client and wallet file.
It can still be spent in other instance of that wallet, say, your Trezor Wallet/Suite app.

Yeah, if you plan on continuing to use Trezor Suite then freezing it in Electrum won't achieve very much, and you still run the risk of accidentally combining it with funds from other addresses in a future transaction, therefore revealing your other addresses to be linked to the addresses we are discussing here.

If it were me, I would just get those coins out of my wallet so I never trip up and accidentally spend them when I didn't mean to in the future. Maybe create a new wallet (you could create a simple software wallet using Electrum if you are going to be downloading it anyway) and send the coins there just to get them out your wallet, or alternatively, send the coins through a service such as ChipMixer so you can return them to your wallet completely obfuscated from your original address.

[kaggie]

A receiving address need not be connected to anything, ever.

All normal bitcoin users can see all transactions connected to any address, so they can see your transactions with that particular address. They won't have other information normally, like who that address belongs to.
If you give someone an address, then they can't easily determine information from it unless you have previously used that same address for other transactions. If you have used it previously, then it depends on how public that information was -- like if you put that address on a donation page linked to you.

One day if receiving addresses are crackable, then there may be information leakage, like how the generating key had a certain pattern that classifies a group of users. For example, a certain range of "random" keys that weren't random. But that's a very long distance into the future, hopefully.

If you have a wallet in something like electrum, then electrum uses public information that it sends to a full node to determine your wallets value. That node would have your IP and the public information sent. There are a lot of nodes and they wouldn't normally save this information, and it's not guaranteed that public information is yours, but that would still be a method to possibly link you to that wallet.

[n0nce]

A receiving address need not be connected to anything, ever.

Well as others have mentioned already, it is connected to other addresses when spending funds that exceed one addresses amount, then multiple addresses are used for input and the 'bad address' will thus be linked to a 'good address'. The 'bad person' will be able to see the 'good address' in a block explorer once a transaction is published that uses the bad and good addresses together as inputs.

That's why coin control and freezing addresses should be used to avoid mixing good coins with coins from that address, or (as also mentioned and my favourite) the coins should be sent somewhere else, mixed, etc.

[HCP]

If it were me, I would just get those coins out of my wallet so I never trip up and accidentally spend them when I didn't mean to in the future.

I concur... this is the "safest" option. Get the coins out of your wallet if you don't want this person to ever be able to track anything back to you.


Take o_e_l_e_o's advice and either shift them to a completely separate wallet and then leave them there or run them through a mixer. Personally, I would go the mixer route... but it depends on the value of coins we're talking about. ie. Chipmixer has a minimum chip size of 0.001BTC... anything lower than that ends up as a "donation".

[o_e_l_e_o]

One day if receiving addresses are crackable, then there may be information leakage, like how the generating key had a certain pattern that classifies a group of users. For example, a certain range of "random" keys that weren't random. But that's a very long distance into the future, hopefully.

To turn a receiving address back in to a private key requires reversing a RIPEMD-160, SHA256, and an elliptic curve multiplication. Even advanced quantum computers which are still decades away will not be able to achieve this. And even if we ever get to a stage that SHA256 can be broken, then an attacker can at most find a collision. Given that there are 2⁹⁶ public keys per address (on average), then that's still far too many possibilities to draw any meaningful conclusions from. In short, this is not a concern.

Your other point regarding Electrum is an important one, though. If OP starts going around looking up this address on various block explorers or querying it through light wallets, then it links his IP address to that bitcoin address. Whether or not that information ever finds its way back to the person he is concerned about is another matter, though.

[LoyceV]

If it were me, I would just get those coins out of my wallet so I never trip up and accidentally spend them when I didn't mean to in the future.

There's one possible flaw in this: if the suspicious guy sends some dust to the same address, you might still accidentally spend it with other coins if you don't pay attention.

It doesn't hurt to have a few different wallets for different purposes. I use hardware/software/mobile/paper depending on what I need.

[n0nce]

If it were me, I would just get those coins out of my wallet so I never trip up and accidentally spend them when I didn't mean to in the future.

There's one possible flaw in this: if the suspicious guy sends some dust to the same address, you might still accidentally spend it with other coins if you don't pay attention.

It doesn't hurt to have a few different wallets for different purposes. I use hardware/software/mobile/paper depending on what I need.

Agree with different wallets for different purposes!

Btw for anyone who doesn't know yet: hardware wallets that support BIP39 passphrase, let you create multiple, cryptographically separate wallets on a single device, by using different passwords. Very neat trick to safely and definitely separate addresses from each other.