Quote from: Poker Player on Today at 02:52:40 AM

Can't wait to see what o_e_l_e_o has to say on this matter.

Thanks for the notification - I might have missed this thread otherwise.

Some general thoughts first. I think most people know that I take my privacy very seriously, far more so than most, even though I am not doing, not have I ever done, anything illegal with bitcoin. I reject governments, Facebook, Google, exchanges, marketing agencies, and who knows what other third parties spying on me. They have no right and no requirement to do so, and mass surveillance will inevitably affect the way you live your life. I'll leave one of my favorite quotes regarding privacy at the bottom of this post.

Having said all that, it is nearly impossible to use the internet anonymously, especially if you are cultivating a continued online presence such as a user on a forum such as this one, and doubly so if you are trading, buying, or selling anything. There are people and businesses out there who know I use bitcoin. I have bought things online with bitcoin giving my real name and address for shipping, and I have traded with people peer to peer with bitcoin, attaching my real name to the fiat transfer method we chose. The way to keep your privacy in such scenarios is by disconnecting different parts of your life or online presence. For example, no one who knows my real identity knows I use this forum, and vice versa.

Quote from: DaveF on October 17, 2021, 08:44:18 PM

Lets think about it. If I had not met anyone, never bought or sold anything here, only connected though a VPN so even the staff here had no idea who or where I was, in theory I was just a name here on the board. That would be anonymous.

But would it be private? That gets a little more deep and I guess depends on your view.

So my presence on this forum is pretty close to anonymous. I've never met anyone, never given out any identifiable information, never connected from an IP address linked to me, etc. But I receive coins to bitcoin addresses linked to this account, which I will obviously want to be able to spend. So I mix and coinjoin and swap for Monero and swap back and various other things. Now I spend these coins on goods and services, I trade them peer to peer, I buy things online to be shipped to my house, I spend them in person letting people see my face, and so on. I am absolutely not anonymous doing any of these things. But I still maintain good privacy, because no one on this forum knows how or where I spend my coins, and the people I'm spending my coins with can't see my entire bitcoin holdings or where else I am spending my coins. I don't have a centralized exchange or payment processor demanding my KYC and monitoring all my transactions.

I know that I am an outlier when it comes to this stuff though. Most people have completed KYC on at least one exchange. Most people use Google or Facebook products. Most people don't use Tor. It is convenient to do these things. The cost of maintaining your privacy is inconvenience, but I firmly believe it is worth it.

Quote from: Glenn Greenwald

The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there’s no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it’s in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That’s accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that’s what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.