Some questions about dust transactions

[MegaAkker]

Thanks guys, some very valuable advices and infos here!

[Darker45]

It could possibly link your identity because once you send those dust amounts together with your other UTXOs, your other addresses or main wallet might be uncovered. Once they're known, it's possible they could link one or two of them to a name or address or phone number or email or an account here. That's where they could start their next move. You could be subjected to phishing attacks, for example.

I think this is heavily dependent on if one of those addresses have actually been linked with any KYC platform because if none of the addresses hasn’t been linked with any of the platforms then it’s only your privacy that will actually be affected as all the addresses containing those UTXO will be associated to one entity because of the consolidation but you yourself you will remain anonymous since your personal details are hidden.

Not necessarily. Even if those addresses that are confirmed to be yours aren't linked with any platform that requires KYC, it could still be highly possible that your identity is known.

This forum, for example, is non-KYC, but some accounts here could be traced to actual persons. The same is true with social media platforms. Facebook, for example, doesn't require mandatory KYC to each and every user, but once an address is linked to a Facebook account, it becomes so much easier to find out who owns it.

[Zaguru12]

I think this is heavily dependent on if one of those addresses have actually been linked with any KYC platform because if none of the addresses hasn’t been linked with any of the platforms then it’s only your privacy that will actually be affected as all the addresses containing those UTXO will be associated to one entity because of the consolidation but you yourself you will remain anonymous since your personal details are hidden.

Not necessarily. Even if those addresses that are confirmed to be yours aren't linked with any platform that requires KYC, it could still be highly possible that your identity is known.

This forum, for example, is non-KYC, but some accounts here could be traced to actual persons. The same is true with social media platforms. Facebook, for example, doesn't require mandatory KYC to each and every user, but once an address is linked to a Facebook account, it becomes so much easier to find out who owns it.

We are still saying the same thing here, your address must be connected to something, you perfectly mentioned social media and it’s actually a platform too where you leave your footprints that can get linked to you. Like addresses on social media, profile picture and many more on your bio which exposes you, this is not actually different from a KYC platform because the exception is a government ID that the exchanges requires as more than the social media.

Even on this forum you can remain anonymous until you reveal certain details that exposes you identity and it’s what I was actually pointing at, if you have an address already associated with your social media accounts and you consolidate UTXO that includes this addresses then it signals that it’s yours

[Findingnemo]

Most of the dust attacks are so random that the attacker chose a bunch of addresses that were probably exposed in data breach and initiated such with the hope of trapping them in some social engineering scams. As most of the replies suggested, you have no other option than using CoinControl, so choosing UTXOs for every transaction manually for every bitcoin transaction you make is a good practice that can eliminate dust attacks, paying more fees than you should and even avoiding creating a change balance.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Most of the dust attacks are so random that the attacker chose a bunch of addresses that were probably exposed in data breach and initiated such with the hope of trapping them in some social engineering scams. As most of the replies suggested, you have no other option than using CoinControl, so choosing UTXOs for every transaction manually for every bitcoin transaction you make is a good practice that can eliminate dust attacks, paying more fees than you should and even avoiding creating a change balance.

Data breaches, I really don't think attackers need to have data breaches to do their dust attacks.

Reason is very simple, Bitcoin blockchain is a public one, not a private one, and every transactions, every Bitcoin addresses can be traced on Bitcoin blockchain with Bitcoin block explorers. Attackers are technical guys and they can do that quite easily by filtering Bitcoin addresses with balance that they are interested in. With me or you, it's possibly hard because we don't have technical knowledge and programming skills to do these steps but hackers can do that very comfortably.

How Bitcoin dust attacks happen?
Bitcoin Dust Attacks: How Privacy Gets Compromised.