Random 0.00001 BTC from Laxo Trade?

[zorroaster7]

17mcECuB3KsUN6TJGkCH75RWhaytELh82N

[toleng]

Warning!!

Hasn't anyone considered the possibility that these mysterious "spam" deposits could be worse than spam??  Three possibilities come to mind (I received numerous mBTC myself and started searching for answers when I found this thread fyi).

I have not yet explored the Laxo and other similar spammer sites because of my concerns below. I hope you all are taking proper precautions (using computers that do not have your wallet on them, using TOR, etc.) before doing your exploration and/or hope I am wrong/unjustly paranoid ..

Some things to be worried about, for example: 

1) Classic trojan attack with a bitcoin twist.  When users go to the Laxo site (or whatever) they are offered downloads and/or exposed to browser scripts that are malicious.  Just like trojan emails.  A well designed attack using bitcoin mBTC bait would then scan for unencrypted wallets, unlocked mining machines, etc. - pretty easy to do.

IMO unlikely. People have not been reporting their bitcoin being stolen despite the fact that many people are likely visiting their site because of the blockchain spam. The only real way they could steal your bitcoin (besides running away with any bitcoin you deposit with them) is if you were to install malware and most bitcoin users are smart enough to not download something from unknown websites like this. It would really not be possible AFAIK to steal bitcoin via JavaScript or by only visiting a website.

2) Government surveillance.  Let's say I am a government interested in tracking users who are purchasing illicit items using bitcoin (like Silk Road RIP).  How do I find the identity of users so I can link them to transactions on the blockchain?  If I were such an organization, I would need to link an illicit purchase using bitcoin to a specific real world identity.  Hard thing to do if the bad actor is using TOR!!  So, instead, why not seed thousands (millions?) of wallets with small BTC amounts.  These micro BTC deposits would be made into wallets of known and/or traceable users (like those of us online at bitcointalk) who would then spend the btc.   The spent BTC goes from user to user to user and (if enough of these "spam" deposits are made) will eventually end up in the wallets of a target bad actor providing a possible means of identifying him.  As a simple example, lets say I sell 1 BTC via localbitcoins to a person live for cash. This person turns out to use the BTC for something illegal (guns, drugs, etc.)  My wallet automatically chooses the inputs which happen to include one of the .00001 BTC deposits.  I may not even have noticed this, but now the authorities have a way of tracing the BTC used by the illegal actor back to me.  It may not be enough to get to the real bad actor, but it gives them a substantial lead (because I could give a description and details that could lead them to the identity of the person they seek).  Moreover, if they "salt and pepper" the blockchain with enough mBTC, they can start to use statistical methods to zero in on suspects by tracing many different transactions that use these baited mBTC.

Any attempt to track who owns a specific bitcoin address via dust will force the attacker to guess a substantial portion of the time, making their accuracy to be low. This is exaggerated when people do not keep even amounts of bitcoin in each of their addresses.

3) Government setups/traps.  Just like with "To Catch a Predator" on NBC, why not send out mBTC laced with info leading to child porn sites?  Now, anyone who visits those sites can be tracked in two ways potentially (1) via the wallet address linked to an online idenity scraped from this site, and/or (2) via IP address when the poor sick schmuck visits one of those sites and attempts a download.

FUD - To Catch a Predator relies on pedos to actively seek out someone who is underage to meet up with. They do not go around offering random people a way to break the law.

[Opnsrc]

UGH!!!

My Coinbase account was just spammed by 7 separate transactions of 1 Sat  >.>

[MultipliedCombo]

Laxo Trade seems like a HYIP, and most HYIPs only last a month or so, sometimes less, sometimes more.

It's called a Ponzi.

Take a look at Wikipedia's definition of HYIP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-yield_investment_program

"A high-yield investment program (HYIP) is a type of Ponzi scheme,"

Either word would work.

[sifter]

UGH!!!

My Coinbase account was just spammed by 7 separate transactions of 1 Sat  >.>

Same here, and it's even worse when they just sit there as pending.

[Window2Wall]

Laxo Trade seems like a HYIP, and most HYIPs only last a month or so, sometimes less, sometimes more.

It's called a Ponzi.

Take a look at Wikipedia's definition of HYIP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-yield_investment_program

"A high-yield investment program (HYIP) is a type of Ponzi scheme,"

Either word would work.

A ponzi is actually designed to last a little bit longer then a HYIP as earlier investors in poinzis are paid by later investors and will continue until there are not enough new investors to pay older investors while a HYIP generally will have it's owner run away with investor funds once the total "investment" is high enough to make it worth their while to stop "operating"

EDIT: I agree they are both essentially the same that they are both scams and should be stayed away from

[micky123]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

[RustyNomad]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

They send out thousands of 'micro' payments to randomly selected addresses. These payments are all sent from one key and this key has been tagged with their website address on Blockchain.info. So they hope that these thousands of users will look up the payment, which most will do as they don't know where it came from, and when doing so see their website address and go to their site and possibly sign up for the services/products they have on offer.

So essentially the same as a bulk spam email going out only here there is some cost involved.

[ANTIcentralized]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

They send out thousands of 'micro' payments to randomly selected addresses. These payments are all sent from one key and this key has been tagged with their website address on Blockchain.info. So they hope that these thousands of users will look up the payment, which most will do as they don't know where it came from, and when doing so see their website address and go to their site and possibly sign up for the services/products they have on offer.

So essentially the same as a bulk spam email going out only here there is some cost involved.

The difference here is that spam email is free for the sender to send and takes up resources of the receivers email provider. With bitcoin the sender pays the TX fee so laxo (in this case) will need to pay the miners for confirming the transactions. They have paid a lot in TX fees alone which have gone to the miners

[SpyPacked]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

The transactions have a public note on them, saying their website. Blockchain also has a feature to label addresses, and Laxo Trade is using an address which is labeled with their name and website.

[DFS]

Did they finish giving away the free BTC? Awh, man.

[BIGbangTheory]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

The transactions have a public note on them, saying their website. Blockchain also has a feature to label addresses, and Laxo Trade is using an address which is labeled with their name and website.

The public notes are actually only available if you use the blockchain.info block explorer, otherwise they will be invisible to you (they are not actually on the blockchain).

Most importantly they are paying an appropriate miners fee therefore are essentially paying to help keep the network secure

[micky123]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

The transactions have a public note on them, saying their website. Blockchain also has a feature to label addresses, and Laxo Trade is using an address which is labeled with their name and website.

The public notes are actually only available if you use the blockchain.info block explorer, otherwise they will be invisible to you (they are not actually on the blockchain).

Most importantly they are paying an appropriate miners fee therefore are essentially paying to help keep the network secure

I kinda agree with your theory, that they are helping in the long run.. so maybe they are advertising too, but at least they are paying the miner fee for the advertisements. I really dont see any harm unless there is some kind of ulterior motive. Most folks in the crypto world are smart enough to understand that HYIP's just don't work. So if we are making something out of it and there is no way they can hijack your BTC wallet, i dont really see any harm

[itsAj]

Could be just advertising spam.

[Eisenhower34]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

The transactions have a public note on them, saying their website. Blockchain also has a feature to label addresses, and Laxo Trade is using an address which is labeled with their name and website.

The public notes are actually only available if you use the blockchain.info block explorer, otherwise they will be invisible to you (they are not actually on the blockchain).

Most importantly they are paying an appropriate miners fee therefore are essentially paying to help keep the network secure

I kinda agree with your theory, that they are helping in the long run.. so maybe they are advertising too, but at least they are paying the miner fee for the advertisements. I really dont see any harm unless there is some kind of ulterior motive. Most folks in the crypto world are smart enough to understand that HYIP's just don't work. So if we are making something out of it and there is no way they can hijack your BTC wallet, i dont really see any harm

Well if they did not pay a large enough TX fee then the TX would simply fall off of the memory pool after ~24 hours.

[funtotry]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

The transactions have a public note on them, saying their website. Blockchain also has a feature to label addresses, and Laxo Trade is using an address which is labeled with their name and website.

The public notes are actually only available if you use the blockchain.info block explorer, otherwise they will be invisible to you (they are not actually on the blockchain).

Most importantly they are paying an appropriate miners fee therefore are essentially paying to help keep the network secure

I kinda agree with your theory, that they are helping in the long run.. so maybe they are advertising too, but at least they are paying the miner fee for the advertisements. I really dont see any harm unless there is some kind of ulterior motive. Most folks in the crypto world are smart enough to understand that HYIP's just don't work. So if we are making something out of it and there is no way they can hijack your BTC wallet, i dont really see any harm

Their motive is that they want people to invest in their site and help them earn money. It is advertising, and the motive is that of every other advertisement. The difference in this case is that unlike announcement threads, there is no 'central' place for people to report their feedback to their services and if they got scammed

[keber]

Does it really free? hah
It sounds great,But it's hard to  let people to believe it's true.

[Grand_Voyageur]

Laxo Trade is still spreading their BTC across wallets or they already stopped their spamming? 

[bithound]

Does it really free? hah
It sounds great,But it's hard to  let people to believe it's true.

LOL.. Too good to be true.

[bf4btc]

How is this spam? Are tiny transactions like these considered to be spam?

The transactions have a public note on them, saying their website. Blockchain also has a feature to label addresses, and Laxo Trade is using an address which is labeled with their name and website.

The public notes are actually only available if you use the blockchain.info block explorer, otherwise they will be invisible to you (they are not actually on the blockchain).

Most importantly they are paying an appropriate miners fee therefore are essentially paying to help keep the network secure

I kinda agree with your theory, that they are helping in the long run.. so maybe they are advertising too, but at least they are paying the miner fee for the advertisements. I really dont see any harm unless there is some kind of ulterior motive. Most folks in the crypto world are smart enough to understand that HYIP's just don't work. So if we are making something out of it and there is no way they can hijack your BTC wallet, i dont really see any harm

They are helping the miners because they are paying TXs fees in blocks that are not full so the miners get more revenue then they otherwise would be able to get. The massive number of outputs they are creating has caused their "spam" to be received and noticed by a lot of people so they are getting a good amount of attention. I would approach them with caution as I would with any other business that I would need to trust my bitcoin with