Quote from: death_wish on June 17, 2022, 07:38:11 PM

Quote from: AlcoHoDL on June 17, 2022, 06:25:56 PM

Everything is as I left it, except for some dust amounts of BTC that some unknown entity has been regularly depositing to my wallet. I guess this is done to "mark" my wallet and track any future movement of my coins. Well, FUCK YOU, whoever you are, your dust will never be moved from there, so feel free to send more...

I’d always thought that “dusting” was an urban legend, except that so many smart people report receiving these mysterious transactions. It would be an awfully expensive way to do blockchain analysis; and dusting an address that already contains coins makes no sense. The coin you already have can be tracked: Where it moves to, what change it gives, what other coins it may merge with, etc. How does merging another UTXO add any information helpful to the spies? What am I missing here? (The biggest privacy killer is, IMO, coin merge from one’s own change.)

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Quote from: AverageGlabella on June 17, 2022, 11:16:50 PM

Quote from: AlcoHoDL on June 17, 2022, 06:25:56 PM

Just refreshed my neurons with my passphrase on my Trezor. Everything is as I left it, except for some dust amounts of BTC that some unknown entity has been regularly depositing to my wallet. I guess this is done to "mark" my wallet and track any future movement of my coins. Well, FUCK YOU, whoever you are, your dust will never be moved from there, so feel free to send more...

They could track your future movements without marking it? They just need to know your address or do you mean by combing the dust into change and finding out your other addresses you have in the same wallet?

I don't know exactly how these entities use the "dusting" technique, and what exactly they want to accomplish, but it is definitely happening. It usually comes in waves. I would see a few "dust" transactions over a time period of a few weeks, then this "dusting" would stop and come back again at a later time. The amounts are exactly the same in each wave, and are under $1 each, at the time of "dusting". Maybe they want to track this "dust" as it moves together with the rest of the coins? Is this part of some statistical analysis algorithm? I don't know. But I will certainly not be moving this "dust" anytime soon...

Just found the following related article—not sure how good it is, but it does explain a few things.

NOWNodes — Bitcoin Dust Attack Explained