Dev's, I have read that PIVX broadcasts user ips and masternodes also retain a log of all users ip addresses. is this true ?
no
it is not true
Sorry but I think it's wrong. The Wallet broadcasts your ips to others to find peers. How otherwise would they find you? It's kept in the peers.dat file.
To mitigate this you can use tor. you just need to download torbrowser from
www.torproject.org and go to your pivx wallet in the network tab and select Connect through SOCKS5 and change the port to 9150.
For your masternode you can create a tor hidden service (.onion address). There are many guides.
If you intend to browse with TBB it is unwise to also use the TBB Tor as a SOCKS proxy for other applications. You may actually be breaking / leaking both your TBB anonymity (when browsing) and the SOCKS applications anonymity (PIVX).
Instead you should install the Tor Expert Bundle and ensure that you proxify PIVX through that Tor SOCKS proxy separately. It is perfectly OK to use the TBB and the Expert Bundle on the same machine. They use different ports when configured correctly i.e. with 2 version of Tor running on the same machine.
Here is a link to the post I made recently on the Zcash forum in regards to using 'Zcash on Tor' ;
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https://forum.z.cash/t/set-up-guide-for-running-zcash-on-tor-ubuntu-debian-linux-desktop/18748If you require actual privacy and anonymity when using PIVX and/or Tor then don't use MS Windows - period.
...
After some downtime of the pivxproxy.zone website (due to some issues with the hosting provider - hopefully resolved) the service is now back online. Although it's just an old-style basic https web proxy it provides some additional resources and marketing for the project.
My original (PIVX formally known as dnet) addnode=.onion's are now gone / offline. However, I continue to host the following PIVX addnode=.onion's to maintain my provision for the project;
addnode=s3v3n7xhqafg6sb7.onion
addnode=pivxvj7kcklujarx.onion
addnode=pivxrwvnsol7ijxj.onion
All 3 nodes are upgraded to the v2.3.0 release.
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https://forum.pivx.org/t/introducing-pivxproxy-zone/624/2