If you have reused addresses, you have already negatively affected your privacy.
Not necessarily.
Imagine if you and I had a
private deal and you gave me your address and I sent you 3 payments on 3 different occasions. As far as
the rest of the world knows an arbitrary address received coins from 1 to 3 [sending] addresses but they don't know if that address belongs to you. Consolidating those 3 outputs doesn't change that either.
If you sent me three transactions to the same address, an observer would, at a minimum, know that I own the sum of the transaction amounts received from you.
Yes, but in a practical way: do you change your address every time you receive a payment from the sig campaign?
You can receive several payments in one direction, and if you want privacy, you pass it through a mixer. It sounds to me that o_e_l_e_o said he does that with the payments he receives.
Another thing: if you have small inputs but you are going to hold them for the very long term, do you think it might not be necessary to consolidate them? I got the idea from this:
I had some dust in my wallet 4 years ago, today its worth 6000$.
Let's suppose you have two wallets, one that is for very long term hold (minimum two cycles) and one that is for expenses. If Bitcoin price rises as many of us expect it to in two cycles, it may not be worth consolidating the small inputs now. Although we would have to see if the fees go up proportionally as well.
What do you think?