Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: technopium on November 10, 2012, 04:14 am

Title: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: technopium on November 10, 2012, 04:14 am
It seems to be a YES at this point and that sucks.  At least they put the information out there that they are doing so.  Of course the anonymity is compromised as it now seems that BitInstant is checking the customer name and phone against a 'blacklist' held by the US Treasury.  Using fake info should still be OK, unless you happen to pick the wrong name.  I found this on their 11/5/12 blog and will post below.  A poster mentioned that BitInstant was raided by the FBI and it does appear that is the case and they now are "working to operate in full compliance with US law."  Will you still use or should we look elsewhere?


We've re-opened two of our "Pay to" options on BitInstant.com:

1) Bitcoin to email (receive BTC directly to your email address)

2) Bitcoin address (receive BTC directly to your Bitcoin account)

While customers will be happy to see these options return, please note that BitInstant will now be doing "OFAC" checks on cash deposit orders that go through these methods. OFAC (stands for "Office of Foreign Asset Control") checks require a customer's full name and date of birth. This information is checked against a "blacklist" managed by the US Department of the Treasury. This blacklist includes people for whom US companies are not allowed to process transactions, primarily due to alleged or proven criminal or terrorist activity.

As BitInstant is continually working to operate in full compliance with US law, the company now requires this additional information before processing any orders that use the Bitcoin to email or Bitcoin address as a "Pay to" method. In the interest of transparency, we've also updated the BitInstant Privacy Policy to reflect this new change.

You can read more about OFAC checks here.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: metaphoe on November 10, 2012, 04:17 am
i made a deposit today.. fake name and number. no id.

straight fire.. it works faster. and the loading takes about 40 mins or less..

plus its better we weed out these fukin Haji's on some corrupt shit
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: odd on November 10, 2012, 04:23 am
^^ Same here.  Did a Wal-mart to Mt.Gox with no problems earlier today, all fake info no problems.  So it seems smaller orders are still safe.  I know most people prefer bank deposists for larger sums of cash but it sounds to me it would be safer to invest the time in slowly loading your account with smaller increments.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: divinechemicals on November 10, 2012, 04:34 am
Yeah, this shouldn't be a huge issue. Get a Mt. Gox account and use fake info. My local Moneygram provider doesn't check ID ever. So yeah, just make smaller deposits over a series of several days if you need to make a large deposit. Mildly inconvenient, but then the awesomeness of the Silk Road makes up for it.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: ChineseGeneral on November 10, 2012, 05:49 am
The ChineseGeneral thinks you are all crackheads.  Learn to mine your bitcoins in a pool. 

Bitcointalk.org
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: chronicpain on November 10, 2012, 05:58 am
After reading some posts by the CEO of Bitinstant, they are going to check your name/address in the governments system. If your on it, they will deny your transfer. If your not, it will go thru. They won't hold any funds,  they will either do it or not..

BTW, if you want to check to see if your name/address is on the Govts list, here is the CLEARLINK site that you can check..

Warning, this is a clearnet site.

http://sdnsearch.ofac.treas.gov/Default.aspx

If you dare to put your own name/address in then you can see if you will have a problem or not.. But use that clearnet link at your own risk..
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: HassleHoff on November 10, 2012, 06:25 am
This whole thing makes zero sense. Why ask for a name and DOB if you make no attempt to verify it ? Wouldn't the terrorists just use a fake name too ? It seems like they are going to have to start asking for real verified ID info in order to make this work.

Bitinstant is dead to me now.

Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: metaphoe on November 10, 2012, 07:05 am
im'a use obama name n shit. watch its still worx  8)
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Golden Axon on November 10, 2012, 07:30 am
Seems like LE is targeting the Bitcoin market itself since shutting down SR is rather difficult due to the nature of Tor. Bank transfers to BitInstant were too easy, not surprised they got hit.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: BlarghRawr on November 10, 2012, 07:35 am
This whole thing makes zero sense. Why ask for a name and DOB if you make no attempt to verify it ? Wouldn't the terrorists just use a fake name too ? It seems like they are going to have to start asking for real verified ID info in order to make this work.

Bitinstant is dead to me now.
BitInstant is doing its best to not interfere with bitcoin, but they are being forced to do a bare-minimum. Be happy that the bare minimum is a completely worthless search that can be defeated by a few pieces of false info. Also, be thankful that the government is apparently absolutely SHIT at effective measures.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: FreshKids on November 10, 2012, 08:50 am
Fuck the police, don't tell em shit

If them niggas come around, say suck my dick

I wanna see my lawyer, you can bet hes a jew

and ill be out this bitch in a minute or two

You want me to tell some names, you can lick the tip

Because I know my rights and I plead the fifth

Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Leapfrogger on November 10, 2012, 10:46 am
BitInstant is doing its best to not interfere with bitcoin, but they are being forced to do a bare-minimum. Be happy that the bare minimum is a completely worthless search that can be defeated by a few pieces of false info. Also, be thankful that the government is apparently absolutely SHIT at effective measures.

This is the impression that I get too.

BitInstant has a good thing going. I'll go out on a limb here and say that they know at least 90% of their business comes from SR users. Fortunately for them and us, it can't really be proven what we're using our Bitcoins for. The Bitcoin ledger is incomprehensible to the feds, and even the cryptographers, who have analyzed the records and can tell you a lot of interesting things about the distribution and flow of Bitcoins, don't have much to say about who has what (http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584) ...though I'm sure they could make a pretty good guess.

Still, little things like this are unsettling to many users like myself who are now forced to provide fake names on semi-official documents where we didn't have to before. All it will take is a couple of people being snatched up for falsifying documents in order to scare off a decent portion of customers.

Wait- people are still using fucking Dwolla and Mt. Gox. Maybe I'm being too paranoid...
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Sour D on November 10, 2012, 07:15 pm
     When I went to Walmart for a BitInstant cash deposit to MtGox (money gram), I filled out the receive code and account number only (the only boxes that said "required"), then handed it to the cashier. He said the name, address, phone number are required. I filled it out...

    I gave semi-fake info (real first name, real middle-name AS the last name). For the address I gave the real street name and zip code of a FORMER address of mine, but a different house number. For the phone number, I just scrambled up the real numbers of my cell phone.

   The reason I thought to give semi-fake info as described was because it's easier to be charged with using false information than it is to be charged with bitcoin/SR related stuff (since I always use 2 TOR instawallets, or bitcoin-fog in between mtgox and SR). This way, if I get charged with using false info, I could claim Dislexia, which would in theory be believable because of the way I scrambled digits, used wrong house number, middle name, etc.

    Is this erroneous thinking? Is the semi-fake info more of a risk than it's worth? The reason I'm getting paranoid over this lately is that the most recent time (unlike previously) the Walmart cashier wrote down the info in a binder/log before completing the cash transaction, but still no ID was needed.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: thebakertrio on November 10, 2012, 07:38 pm
im'a use obama name n shit. watch its still worx  8)

LOL i bet it does. Maybe we should use politician names?  drug czar anyone? 8)

Fuck the police, don't tell em shit

If them niggas come around, say suck my dick

I wanna see my lawyer, you can bet hes a jew

and ill be out this bitch in a minute or two

You want me to tell some names, you can lick the tip

Because I know my rights and I plead the fifth

EXACTLY!
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Ballzinator on November 10, 2012, 08:14 pm
bitmarket.eu
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Nellion on November 10, 2012, 08:24 pm
Bitinstant is just partaking in some CYA action. As long as you go to a hotspot to access, and have a trustworthy processing location, you're fine.

Personally, I'm happy to go through the extra work to keep bitinstant up and running. Try to put yourself in their shoes and I'm sure you at least try to appear you were complying. If they were truly trying to track you, they would make more of an emphasis on checking IDs at processing centers.

I think they know that if they start to require IDs they would lose about 90% of their business. And, with them becoming such an easy and popular choice they are making money, money I'm sure they don't want to lose.

So, what would you do? Would you dance their dance and still try to accommodate your customers, or would you be a badass rebel and get your whole operation shut down?
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: technopium on November 11, 2012, 04:25 am
Nellion- I think you are right.  BitInstant could have made the identification procedures as complex as they want, but they know that will cost them a lot of business and so hopefully this is even a proactive step to keep them up and running as I have found them to be the easiest and most accessible way to get BTC.  I am sure they probably saw this coming and I could even see the OFAC check being required by law in the future (for anyone BTC vendor) as governments do try and regulate everything they can to keep control. 

 Just because the vendors ask for the information, doesn't mean we have to give it to them (we just give fake vs our real info) especially as it goes against the morals and mission behind BTC currency.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: mdmamail on November 11, 2012, 06:14 am
Don't use tor to buy off bitinstant, the operators aren't retards they log all obvious proxy endpoints including tor. That's probably exactly what the feds wanted: logs to match up with identities. If you can afford to buy so much you bypass the bitinstant no ID limit then you can afford $10 to build your own socks5 proxy or vpn with a dirt cheap bitcoin vps or amazon instance and use that instead.

If you need into a wifi network download backtrack, capture the wpa2 handshake and upload it to cloudcracker.com
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: EU-Team on November 11, 2012, 06:17 am
https://www.bitstamp.net/

This are the best  ;)
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Nellion on November 11, 2012, 05:47 pm
mdmamail- Could please either inbox me or reply to this thread with more info on the methods you described? Specifically building a socks5 proxy and the cloudcracker for wifi hotspots?

That's some useful information that I'm very interested in and I think it would benefit the community greatly. In this atmosphere, everyone must be there own advocate and take their safety into their own hands instead of expecting site admins and programmers to carry all the burden, and it seems the methods you describe would very much help one be their own advocate :).

Thanks!
Nel
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: fredflintstone on November 11, 2012, 05:57 pm
Its just beurocratic BS. So they can defend claims they assist in money laundering/terrorism etc

They deep down dont give a shit what name you use .. but for a BTC trading site this large to reside in the USA, they are gonna have to do stuff like this.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: Ballzinator on November 11, 2012, 10:49 pm
Its just beurocratic BS. So they can defend claims they assist in money laundering/terrorism etc

They deep down dont give a shit what name you use .. but for a BTC trading site this large to reside in the USA, they are gonna have to do stuff like this.
+1, exactly.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: ChineseGeneral on January 08, 2013, 12:30 am
I hear everyone works with the Feds in the USA.  Something like a Judas Iscariot system of legal procedures of law making proletariats. 

Watch me Please!
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: phuxBITINSTANT on January 08, 2013, 12:54 am
Fuck BitInstant. Inconsiderate bastards!! They screwed me over a few months back for $100 on a zip zap order to my MtGox..the code was already redeemed and it wasn't by me and they said there was nothing they can do about it...So you know what I did? I then made a bank deposit for $900+ and another one for $400+ ... I got my coin.. then two weeks later I went to the bank and told them they made a mistake and deposited the money in the wrong accounts..I then had the $900 transferred from their account to mine!! HAHAH FUCKERS! Thats what they get! I hope someone else was as smart as I was and got to fuck them over before they took away the bank deposit option!! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: 420SLINGER on January 08, 2013, 02:32 am
The ChineseGeneral thinks you are all crackheads.  Learn to mine your bitcoins in a pool. 

Bitcointalk.org

mine bit coins please tell more>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>??????????????????????
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: astonmartin2 on January 08, 2013, 02:48 am
Went to CVS a few days ago to fund my account, just like usual...

I've done this 2 or 3  times now with success.  Maybe $100 each time.

Same alias
Same Fake Address
Same Fake Phone Number
Same Fake DOB

This time the terminal spit back an error at the person behind the register - "Valid Account - Invalid Last Name" 

She called the manager and they explained that I'd have to call Moneygram. 

I told them OK, and asked if I could have my money back.  They did refund but the whole thing is freaky at this point.   

Came home and got scammed with a Moneypak to BTC scam.

It just isn't worth the trouble anymore.
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: leeds4408 on January 08, 2013, 03:10 am
I was going to do a quick search on people's experiences with bitcoin-central (part of the larger Paymium group), but I'm just going to add to this thread very briefly
forgive me if its too irrelevant
anyways, I'm a fairly new member to the SR member and so far, I've never dabbled in the whole BitInstant craze, no matter how tempting the purported sub-1hour exchange of bitcoins
for me, I could not really find myself taking the time and effort to depositing cash in person at places like CVS or Walmart

Rather, my 1 transaction so far has been with bitcoin-central via bank deposit. The huge con from this route is basically the time it takes for the deposit to clear my bank and deposit into the account. Furthermore, I have to obviously exchange the deposited money into bitcoins, in which bitcoin-central appears to use a more trading market platform, where you determine the exchange rate, and just hope that a seller out there finds it reasonable enough to follow through with it, which adds 1-2 more days to the wait time, before having bitcoins in the account.
Then, to take additional precautionary measures, I transfer to myriad InstaWallets (another sub group under Paymium), which could potentially take 1-2 more days, and then finally transfer the BTs from the InstaWallets (or other similar tumbler vendors) into SR account; long story short, it seems to take forever! compared to some of the processing time I am hearing from those BitInstant customers. But are we realizing an inherent tradeoff here, between wait time and security of transaction? or was my route just as insecure as Bit Instant, but just took alot longer?

best regards
*I did my best to keep my post on topic by comparing to BitInstant user experiences, but I am very curious to hear your insight on my route of attaining BTs, and any suggestions on a more secure but perhaps also faster way in attaining BTs, at least faster than the processing time that I am enduring with Paymium (and this most recent bank wire appears to take even longer...)
although I find it really tough to see myself sending money via any other way than direct deposit via bank wire from my checkings
Title: Re: BitInstant working with the FEDS
Post by: stnpq157 on January 08, 2013, 04:54 am
Its just beurocratic BS. So they can defend claims they assist in money laundering/terrorism etc

They deep down dont give a shit what name you use .. but for a BTC trading site this large to reside in the USA, they are gonna have to do stuff like this.


Look, I know many of you will not believe what I am about to say (since I just registered today), but I feel I have to get it off my chest anyway


First a bit of background about me ...  I have worked in the banking industry for many years and I am new user to SR.


The government will successfully go after any system of monetary exchange for AML compliance (Anti-Money Laundering)

It is OK to be a bit paranoid, but THEY ARE NOT AFTER YOU!

Yes, they will do a name search, and try to match you against lists.

It is not Bitinstant's fault.  Anyone that wants to function as a business in this realm, has to comply

They are after bigger fish

terrorrist funding
sanctions violations (e.g., Iran transactions)
drug money laundering ... this does not mean low level drug transactions!


I know my opinions are not popular.  I don't think I have ever met a fellow drug user who agrees with me

I support the patriot act and warrantless wiretaps with a grain of trust.  Let me take this a step further ...

I am OK with government being able to listen to me calling my weed dealer, if that means they can
listen to everyone, b/c I trust that they will ignore the weed tx, and only focus in on their true target.
If you are extremely paranoid, then you probably accept that this is already happening.  Now let me apply a
bit of logic to that hypothesis.  If the govt is already intercepting every phone call, text message, email
then why is everyone not getting busted?  I don't mean SR people, I mean the people that you all surely know
that hook up by more conventional means.  The answer is simple,  THEY ARE NOT AFTER YOU!

If you want to live a stress free life, then you need to take a leap of faith, and understand it is not about you.  There is a bigger picture beyond people trying to acquire recreational drugs.


That being said, if you choose to discover new and innovative means of remaining completely anonymous (i.e., one step ahead of the feds), then I do not discourage that.  By all means, necessity breeds invention.