Danger of posting your bitcoin address online

[Call_Me_Guru]

Like the the topic implies, that was what a friend made me feel due to his panic on why will his bitcoin address and transaction be tracked by a third party after forwarding what I posted here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5454672.0 to him and other friends.

Himself and some other friends are those I do not want them to miss out in bitcoin investment, a reason I every time took my time to explain and any beginners may learn from this short response.

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.
2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.
3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

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[Wapfika]

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.

This is only true if you are using an account that reveal your identity to post your Bitcoin address but simply posting your Bitcoin address online anonymously won’t harm you at all because all our address is exposed publicly on blockchain ledger.

2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.

Exposing your private key is the only way for your Bitcoin to become compromised. Giving personal details and other things is not related on accessing your Bitcoin wallet.

3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

This is only possible if you are using a centralized exchange to purchased and sell Bitcoin. Also you will encounter that kind of sensitive problem if you do something wrong because no one can access your data on centralized services without request by the authority to share your information.


Sharing publicly your wallet address is not a big deal at all if you knew to keep safe your private key properly. Most of the scammers blatantly posting their address publicly to scam people. If this people hiding from the law can do it without a problem then why normal people will worry on doing same thing?

[Hyphen(-)]

Your explanation is quite impressive as you made them know that there is nothing to panic about just because they track their Bitcoin transaction in any of the websites you provide in your previous post.

There are more this explanations, I will suggest you recommend learnmeabitcoin.com to your friends so that they can learn more about Bitcoin wallets, keys and address.

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.

Yes, the address is like your bank account number; therefore, there is no problem sharing it with the public since it cannot be used to unlock the wallet.

2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.

You mean Bitcoin wallet?
Your Bitcoin address is your public key, which has nothing to do with the privacy of your wallet; only the private key has that.

[Frankolala]

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.

You are right just the way you share some private information about your bank account and hackers can compromise it. This is the same way if you give or expose your private keys or seedphrase online or to thieves that your wallet can be compromise not your public address.

3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself.

This is when you use a centralized platform to carry out one or two services. Apart from that there is no way such will happen. This is why it is advisable not to store or keep your personal information on centralized platform or exchanges.

[348Judah]

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.
2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.
3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself.

Any bitcoiner that is privacy conscious should understand the needs why he should not post about bhis life on social media not to talk about showing the world he's a bitcoiner and making his address public, this is one of the ways we carelessly attract spammers, hacker and scammers to ourselves from the open ed internet through our negligence to security control measures, henceforth we begin to receive malicious links, physhing attacks and we becomes the center of target to be hunt down by the fraudulent ones on the internet, it is also not a good decision to go public with your address especially in countries where bitcoin is not accepted as a legal means of transaction or payment.

[stompix]

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address.

This is a mistake!
Nothing can be revealed when you just post an address that has either zero balance or that you have just deposited some coins from a really private source, like a mixer and that's it.

The moment you start using the address that has been linked to your profile and the more you post about your profile, with every single action your privacy gets eroded till you will not be safe anymore, and in extreme cases it might be even worse than a bank. Let me give you an example, of how badly this can turn
- you purchase from that address a hard wallet since a ton of chain analysts can label almost all business and value at the moment of the tx, they will see you have made a transfer of the exact value of a Ledger Nano X.
- Ledger does what it knows best and leaks the data again

So now everyone can link all the addresses that have paid the price of a ledger wallet to the addresses posted online on social media, and here you go, addresses bc1xxxx, with a balance of 100 BTC which is tempting to any thief has a user that is from Shangri La and here you go, the address, your phone number, and everything are now tied together and your privacy is gone, forever!

And it's not just that complicated, you order a simple pizza from that address, the pizza store owner knows your apartment address for the delivery and knows from where you have paid him, from now he can have a new hobby, let's see what this customer of mine has been doing, oh, he just withdraw 20 BTC, half a million from ana exchange...Hmm, I know a few guys!!!

[Who is John Galt?]

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

Indeed, just by seeing someone's public address, no one will be able to find out anything if the owner of this address has not told anything about himself. Since all addresses are immediately visible on the blockchain, we can see any of them. If there were any direct danger because of this, then the owners of the largest amounts in bitcoins would have faced it long ago.

Most of the issues that have come to light are related to the careless storage of private keys and seed phrases, as well as the fact that the victims widely talked about having bitcoins, which attracted the attention of criminals.

For security, it is important to store your private keys and seed phrases as securely as possible, never transfer them to anyone or store them on a computer that can be attacked by viruses.

It is also important not to tell anyone you have bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. There are cases when someone talked about their bitcoins, and then was attacked by criminals who forced the victims to give them private keys from addresses with cryptocurrencies.

Since the number of addresses in the blockchain is quite large, it is undesirable to use the same address repeatedly if it has already been associated with you in some way. You can always get a new address for more security.

[Asuspawer09]

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.
2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.
3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

I mean you are right, but I guess it's just how Bitcoin is created since all of the transactions are recorded and everyone can see them, I mean bitcoin addresses are public and there's no way you could get hacked by just posting your Bitcoin address online, but I guess there is still a danger of posting it so you could just send to if you someone that your gonna have transactions with.

How can you see the Bitcoin address that is linked to your bank account? Seems not possible and I don't think you're going to use a wallet that publicly shows your wallet is linked to a Bitcoin address. May centralized exchanges do this but they don't really give personal information easily for someone to see.

[nakamura12]

If your bitcoin address is exposed then they may be able to track your transaction and if your personal details is linked to your bitcoin address then there's a possibility that they will know who own that bitcoin address. Exposing bitcoin address won't cause your wallet to be compromised. Bitcoin wallet and Bitcoin address is different where you a bitcoin address is where you will need to receive Bitcoin while bitcoin wallet is where you can make transactions like send btc to another person and also to access your wallet. It's up to you if your bitcoin address is linked to your personal information or not.

[Who is John Galt?]

May centralized exchanges do this but they don't really give personal information easily for someone to see.

News about how various exchanges are hacked, which ultimately leads to the loss of users' personal data, is published regularly. Even if the exchange does not have any criminal intentions, the loss of data by it can lead to no less sad consequences. If you look at the statistics, then a huge percentage of people in the world suffer from identity theft. You should take your own safety as seriously as possible and not rely on third parties for this. KYC is what critically reduces security. Any loss of data or malicious distribution by those who asked you to go through the KYC procedure can lead to the most unpleasant consequences for you.

[dewez]

Like the the topic implies, that was what a friend made me feel due to his panic on why will his bitcoin address and transaction be tracked by a third party after forwarding what I posted here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5454672.0 to him and other friends.

Himself and some other friends are those I do not want them to miss out in bitcoin investment, a reason I every time took my time to explain and any beginners may learn from this short response.

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.
2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.
3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

tell him to retire the one posted and just use another address. am i missing something? you should use them as single serving fyi. so history isn't built up.

[tranthidung]

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.

We only say, Not your keys, not your coins. Keys are private keys, not public keys and not public address.

You have your own bank only if you have private keys of your public addresses.

2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.

If I have a private key of your coins, I can sign a transaction and move it to a new wallet. I can import it and know it public address but I even don't have to know it. My task is simple, sign a transaction and steal your coin. If I am a bad person.

3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

You use metaphor a lot and make your post harder to understand.

If you share your public address, I and other people can paste it on a Bitcoin block explorer and check it transaction history, balance etc. It is what you lose, privacy, personal transaction history, nothing more. Nobody can steal your bitcoin with onky a public address.

Keys, Addresses (Mastering Bitcoin)

[Coyster]

Since all addresses are immediately visible on the blockchain, we can see any of them. If there were any direct danger because of this, then the owners of the largest amounts in bitcoins would have faced it long ago.

All addresses are not immediately visible on the blockchain, the blockchain shows all the transactions that has been made in the network, thus an address must have sent or received funds (and "change") to show on the blockchain.

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

Mind you that you cannot lose your Bitcoin via your address, the only downside with sharing your address is that of loss of privacy. If you use an address that isn't linked to your identity, people can of course see your transactions with the address on the blockchain, but they can't know the real person who uses the address. But an address that is connected to you can reveal your true identity, for example if you use a centralized exchange like binance that holds your personal data, if there is a data leak, people can trace and link true identities with your address because they now have your personal data; this is the reason why KYC is somewhat dangerous/risky.

[Findingnemo]

It will not cause any danger unless you also exposes the private keys but it definitely a concern for privacy, and anyone can track all the transactions and balance and if someone you know personally know about these then it's definitely a big problem. So don't ever expose even the address for any reason so that your privacy won't be compromised at all.

[Z390]

Anybody can share their Bitcoin address online, there are many Bitcoin addresses that are visible online by the real owners, some content creators always leave their Bitcoin addresses at the end of every contents they create online, honestly,  I think Bitcoin address was meant for public use because there is no danger doing so.

The problem here is not the Bitcoin address going public but knowing who the real owner of a particular Bitcoin address, this means the owner is already a target, all eye will be on such person and if bad people are around, they can go after the person, I don't feel bad exposing my Bitcoin address online but I don't want anyone to know that I am the owner, I don't use Facebook and my twitter doesn't even have any information about myself.

I do this because I use my Twitter account for content creating and my addresses for Bitcoin and other coins are on there, imagine my Twitter account having my home address and my pictures.

[Yamane_Keto]

You will need to share your address with someone, and once you share it, they can send it to third parties, and so on. The wisdom of your words should be advice to enhance privacy, as Bitcoin was not originally designed to be highly private, but rather highly transparent (Pseudonymous).

Tips to enhance your privacy are as follows:

• Do not reuse your address.
• Use an open source wallet enables you to connect to your own full node.
• Manage a full node through Tor and use a block explorer within Tor.
• Use address control feature.
• Do not link your address to any central platform or use mixing services to break the link.

avoiding publishing your address, it is closer to stopping using Bitcoin, because you will not guarantee that it will spread on the Internet.

[Upgrade00]

Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous, this means that while every transaction is visible on the block chain it is impossible to link an identity to the address cause the blockchain does not contain that sort of information.
When you expose your personal address you break that pseudo anonymity and every transaction to and from that address can reveal more about you;
• Other addresses you own,
• Your balance across different wallets,
• Possible centralized exchanges you use,
• Hardware wallets you use,
• Other possible informations which can be hacked from the logs of a centralized exchange you're registered on or your social media pages.

Most addresses people reveal are either zero balance wallets or are not linked to any other wallets they owm

[Distinctin]

If your bitcoin address is exposed then they may be able to track your transaction and if your personal details is linked to your bitcoin address then there's a possibility that they will know who own that bitcoin address. Exposing bitcoin address won't cause your wallet to be compromised. Bitcoin wallet and Bitcoin address is different where you a bitcoin address is where you will need to receive Bitcoin while bitcoin wallet is where you can make transactions like send btc to another person and also to access your wallet. It's up to you if your bitcoin address is linked to your personal information or not.

Still, it remains dangerous to post something that is very important to you. Disclosing essential details will only trigger some potential hackers to steal what you have, most especially when it comes to bitcoin as they already know that it’s a very valuable investment. Although exposing your bitcoin address will never compromised your bitcoin portfolio, but who knows, some professional hackers might even link it to your bitcoin wallet especially if you are not responsible enough keeping the security of your own account.

[Kemarit]

Like the the topic implies, that was what a friend made me feel due to his panic on why will his bitcoin address and transaction be tracked by a third party after forwarding what I posted here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5454672.0 to him and other friends.

Himself and some other friends are those I do not want them to miss out in bitcoin investment, a reason I every time took my time to explain and any beginners may learn from this short response.

1- You bitcoin address in not your bitcoin but a house for it just like your bank account.
2- Your bitcoin address can only be be compromised if you share your personal details or private key along with sharing the address.
3- People may say that your bitcoin address can be likened to your bank account and and email address, I have read it online myself. They are right to some extent, but the privacy of bitcoin is far better. Why? Through your bank details, your details can be known by diggers, same goes for email address if you use your real identity to open it.

But for bitcoin, nothing will be revealed relating to you by merely seeing your address. It is again good to use non-custodial wallet for keeping your bitcoin safe and own total right to it.

Yes, but you should know that it's only addresses, it doesn't have any name on it. Specially if you exposed a wallet addresses that you have control of, then I doubt that someone will know that it belongs to you unless you publicly going to state it that it is yours.

Of course, there is blockchain analysis that can track your addresses, but they really need to dig deeper and to see the connections per se.

And this is why there are traders who like to used DEX, because the exchanges doesn't require you to submit KYC and again, you have that control of your private keys which is very important.

[nakamura12]

Still, it remains dangerous to post something that is very important to you. Disclosing essential details will only trigger some potential hackers to steal what you have, most especially when it comes to bitcoin as they already know that it’s a very valuable investment. Although exposing your bitcoin address will never compromised your bitcoin portfolio, but who knows, some professional hackers might even link it to your bitcoin wallet especially if you are not responsible enough keeping the security of your own account.

I am aware of the consequences if you exposed your BTC address that is linked with your personal information kr personal details but it there's no personal information linked in the btc address then I don't see any problem if my btc address is exposed. I don't care if they can check the transaction in my btc address but they won't know who I am and where I sent my btc. If ever they get your personal information then I can say it's either they won't do anything at all or they use or in short, identity theft.