Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: twopackshaker on February 24, 2013, 10:24 pm

Title: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: twopackshaker on February 24, 2013, 10:24 pm
Hello all --

I have already prepared myself by learning all that I know to prepare for to ensure the greatest security/privacy/anonymity possible. I've learned PGP encryption/decryption for sensitive communications, in addition to learning about BitCoin, and have also researched different vendors and think I may finally have decided on one.

Currently, he has over 200 fans and a 99% rating. I think he would be a pretty safe bet. Plus his prices, in my opinion, are extremely fair.

I realize this is a long-ish post, and I sincerely apologize for that. I put the main points of each paragraph towards the beginning. Feel free to respond to any (or all) of the parts that you can, if you have any experience or knowledge you'd like to share.

So my question is this: I haven't actually purchased any BitCoin yet. I would prefer to go someplace locally where I can use CASH to purchase BitCoins, and the thing is, this particular seller actually claims to sell it himself in a way that sounds like it would allow me to do that. Has anybody ever heard of a "reloadit card" before? I have several places nearby that I could use the service... but is it secure? Or is it unwise, even? Again, the seller appears to have a good track record, so I would think it'd be okay, but I don't want to get burned my first time.

Second, I am going to want to order some points as well. If you don't know what those are, please don't respond to this part of the post. It's hard or impossible to get them legally where I live, and I personally want to get some if I can as well. My question is this, is it really possible to send something like that through the mail safely? I mean, the candy itself, MAYBE, but those seem like they'd be harder to conceal. Any advice on that would be appreciated.

Lastly, I know these sellers know what they are doing, but I still worry about having things come through the mail, even if it's domestically (I don't think I will ever do business internationally). How secure and stealthy, is it really? And beyond that... where should I get it sent, and how should I proceed to make sure it's just as safe and anonymous as possible, even in the last stage where you get your physical product(s).

Sorry for such a long post, but I am very nervous about my first time doing things, even though I feel like I have done a lot of preparation to make sure both myself and the vendor are as safe as possible.

God bless you all,

--twopack
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: SNSD on February 24, 2013, 10:31 pm
For coins it depends on your location for recommendations. do a search of the forum for past discussions on your location. Failing that, localbitcoins should be able to do what you require with depositing cash directly.

About security? There is little to no risk. It's just mail... Just send it to your home address with your correct name. The whole point is to just blend it in with regular mail. Of which millions are processed daily, these being no different.
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: twopackshaker on February 24, 2013, 10:57 pm
For coins it depends on your location for recommendations. do a search of the forum for past discussions on your location. Failing that, localbitcoins should be able to do what you require with depositing cash directly.

About security? There is little to no risk. It's just mail... Just send it to your home address with your correct name. The whole point is to just blend it in with regular mail. Of which millions are processed daily, these being no different.

Right, I already know that there are plenty of places nearby I can use the seller's recommended method -- called a "reloadit card" or something like that. I checked the site and there's tons of places nearby... surprisingly. I am just wondering if anyone else has any experience with something like that. I live in a fairly urban area so chances are there's lots of choices all around. Any suggestions for cash to BtC are totally appreciated.

What I mean is this... say you get some sort of powdered product, or even crazier, something in a tube or vial or something... what exactly do sellers normally do to provide stealth beyond like, vacuum sealed bags. I am just curious. Especially before I put my real name and address on something, ya dig?

Thank you for your input, though. Slowly getting to 50, meanwhile, lol :P
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: anonom on February 24, 2013, 11:12 pm
Hi and welcome to SR (says another newbie  :) )

I personally didn't try to buy Bitcoins in a 100% anonymous manner. Is it worth the effort ? I mean security is mostly about getting something as secured as it needs to be. The risk is often to fall into a paranoid state and spend more time preparing yourself than actually enjoying your product.

I bought my BTC in a trading website similar to Mt-gox and was quite happy with it. Sure you could try to buy them with some cash and go with an hat and sunglasses to a local shop. In my opinion that would just make you more suspicious.

There is two features from SR to protect the origin of my bitcoins:

1) At any time you can generate a new address to receive bitcoins on SR. I may be wrong but that makes it already quite complicated for an external observer to know for sure your bitcoins went to SR.
2) The tumbler system splits your BTC when paying and then regroup them later after some "decoy" transactions.

 The above doesn't mean it's impossible for an external observer to prove you sent BTC to SR, yet it would be insanely difficult if it's possible.
As long as you don't do big orders or order "extremely controlled illegal stuff" in your country, the above effort would seem exaggerated.

I did only one order so I'm no expert but I think it's statistically a ton safer than buying anything on the street.

As SNSD mentionned, remember that's just mail. As long as you don't admit ordering this, it will be very difficult for someone to prove anything. My biggest fear is a "controlled" delivery followed by a search warrant. But I don't think you can obtain a search warrant for tiny amounts...

I would recommend that you focus more on the way you will receive your order rather than getting crazzy on how to obtain bitcoins.

As i've no idea what "points" are or what you want to order I can't really help for the delivery itself. (BTW what is that ? Just out of curiosity :) )

If you really want to do it 100% safe, you should not :

1) Send it to your own home.
2) Send it to your own name.
3) Pick it up right after delivery ? (If you go straight away to your box, i personally thinks it's suspicious of someone expecting a package soon).
4) Do not use your product where it was delivered.

You could use someone else mailbox but you really got to be cautious. If you tell that person, you need to trust her. If you don't tell this person you better be sure the mailman will not feel something's off (a delivery to someone who left for holidays ?).

Some mailbox are really easy to open (Bump keys or lockpicking tools) and that can be a good way to use someone else mailbox but you got to be careful.

Be rational ! Do a list of what's the most dangerous thing for your order and then work in each points. It's not worth securing the wrong thing except if you really want to achieve top notch security.

Oh and about the vendor, I would suggest to contact them in case of doubts ! Before my first order, I asked for some advices and stats from the vendor. It surely helped me to know that this vendor had a 100% success on domestic orders. I mean vendors do know how successful they are for each countries, I would suggest you ask nicely to your vendor of choice. Plus, it may get the vendor more keen to trust you since they already talked to you and saw that you are worried ! (A scamer wouldn't bother most of the time...).

EDIT after your latest reply:

1) Remember not to get paranoid ! Blending in is the best way to stay safe.
2) Security always must be proportionate to risk

We can't really tell you how packages are made stealth but the important thing is :

1) The outside : Printed labels tend to make the package looks more professionnal and blend in among small business letters/packages.
2) The inside and the smell: The inside look is pretty useless since an opened package will most likely be lost and detected. The smell can be nearly entirely suppressed by vacuum sealing everything. Yet i still think a very welll trained dog would certainly pick it up if you put it right under is nose. But a dog has it's cost and doesn't seems to really go on conveyers anyway.

If a vendor has hundreds of successful shipping, then you can guess it's stealth techniques are effective enough.

Oh and one last thing, domestic orders are way less controlled than international ones. Just get figures on the FULL total of letters sent on one day and you will know it's impossible to control everything. At this point their priority is to detects what comes from abroad rather than locally.

Hope it helps and good luck for your first order ! (Again, DO NOT GET PARANOID, nor uncautious)
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: powerndknowledge on February 24, 2013, 11:14 pm
i wouldn't send huge bulk amounts but its relatively safe to send to your home
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: twopackshaker on February 24, 2013, 11:27 pm
For all those wondering, points are hypodermic needles, basically. At least that's what I meant when I said it. So much for being discreet I guess. But yes, they are quite noticeable, no? Would you have them sent to you in the mail? Cause I am seriously about to try. Once I get my PO box or whatever set up, cause I don't want them sent where I reside the most. Or anywhere else for that matter that other people could be affected by it.

And dude, I wouldn't be going into any stores in sunglasses and/or what's basically stereotypically the suspicious person's uniform to a store where there is in fact no sunlight. I can buy BitCoins, to use later however I choose, legally. They have no clue. Part of the beauty of the coin is it IN ITSELF is also pretty anonymous. It's just funny cause where I live if you go indoors with sunglasses on, or something like that, you'll probably get shot.

I am going to have to read the rest of your post a little bit later because I am sort of drunk. But thank you for the information, and I will respond in depth once I realize exactly what you said :P
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: Qthello on February 24, 2013, 11:43 pm
I assume you're in the US? I am too. I used bitinstant.com from the regular internet. I found out that the local walmart would take moneygrams(they're blue slips at the customer service counter)I placed my order with bitinstant, to my desired wallet. I took the verification email with me on my smartphone. I took out the money from the atm, shot shit with the kid at the desk who was in a metal band and pretty excited to talk about it, and also bitcoins. He had seen that I was using bitinstant and mentioned he has seen the name of the company often.

Now I am from a small town in the US. And enough people are buying bitcoins for whatever reason that a 23 year old kid with ear plugs and a fohawk recognized the name. I handed him the cash said good luck, as he did me. I went home, checked my wallet and zap. there they were. I moved them to my offline wallet, then to my blockchain online account then upped to SR. The entire process took maybe 12 hours. It would have been maybe 2 hours had I synced my offline wallet blocks. Which I had to allow to do over night while I slept.

It was that easy and to be honest with you, fun. For me anyway. Feel free to message me pm if you have questions in regards to this comment. I hope it helps, if not. I hope you find what you seek. =)
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: SycoPunk on February 24, 2013, 11:52 pm
i use bitinstant as well.
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: twopackshaker on February 24, 2013, 11:56 pm
Well WHAT IF using a bank account wasn't exactly feasible for somebody? How do I turn cash into BitCoin, that's all.
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: anonom on February 25, 2013, 12:11 am
Oh well :)

I didn't know what points were. That means my "advices" on stealth packages are quite irrelevant. Specific items may need specific shipments techniques. For the rest, I still think it may be useful :)

Glad to learn about BitInstant, i got to see if that's achievable in my country !

I wonder why so many people thinks buying Bitcoins is so suspicious. I mean it's used in many other things than SR right ? I personnally don't want to take too much time securing the payment part while the most dangerous part is clearly receiving the package.

Good luck !

Anonom.
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: Qthello on February 25, 2013, 12:13 am
That's what I did, I used cash. I went too bitinstant, filled the shit out. took my cash to walmart. Well card, took the cash out. So if you have cash man, go to bitinstant fill that shit out, head to where you need too, fill out what you need to and there yea go. I used my real name on that part. It is not illegal to get bitcoins man.
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: Stringer on February 25, 2013, 12:26 am
What if you're buying some serious coin? Like maybe 3 or 4k worth? Should it be stretched out over a few days, done at multiple stores, or can it be done all at once?
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: twopackshaker on February 25, 2013, 12:35 am
That's what I did, I used cash. I went too bitinstant, filled the shit out. took my cash to walmart. Well card, took the cash out. So if you have cash man, go to bitinstant fill that shit out, head to where you need too, fill out what you need to and there yea go. I used my real name on that part. It is not illegal to get bitcoins man.

OH I must have missed that part. I am a dummy sometimes. Well very well. Do I have to wait in the mail for a BitInstant card or something? Or can I just pick it up that day at a Wal Mart or whatever.

Also, for big investments... uhhh I don't know if it was me I might space it out. But again, buying BitCoin is not illegal in and of itself. I hope.

twopack
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: onetwothree on February 25, 2013, 01:04 am
That's what I did, I used cash. I went too bitinstant, filled the shit out. took my cash to walmart. Well card, took the cash out. So if you have cash man, go to bitinstant fill that shit out, head to where you need too, fill out what you need to and there yea go. I used my real name on that part. It is not illegal to get bitcoins man.

OH I must have missed that part. I am a dummy sometimes. Well very well. Do I have to wait in the mail for a BitInstant card or something? Or can I just pick it up that day at a Wal Mart or whatever.

You fill out a form at bitinstant.com. They will provide you an account to 'pay a bill' to. You take cash to walmart and fill out the moneygram form there to 'pay your bill' (based on the information bitinstant has provided). There are no cards involved. Until bitinstant disintegrated a week or two ago, from deciding I wanted coins to having them took me an average of 30 minutes, and most of that was the drive time to walmart. It really is (or was anyway) instant.

If you want the SAFEST shipping, you will have to develop a drop. However, for personal amounts, straight to your house is usually fine. I've always received directly to my actual residence.

As for needles, those seem really unlikely to get caught if packaged properly at all. I don't know where you live where needles are illegal... ?
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: Qthello on February 25, 2013, 01:07 am
You're not a dummy, I am still nub to this. I know I filled out the bitinstant, had my validation slip sent to my yahoo email, that way I could get my mail on my smartphone so I could get the numbers off it. You can print it, right them down. whatever. You are not required to show Id. I think the store money grams will only do 500-1k depending on the store...USD. Larger ones just do at a bank, if anyone asks. Fuck them you're investing your money. It is no different then buying gold or silver. And you do not have to tell the shit.

Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: Stringer on February 25, 2013, 03:30 am
That's what I did, I used cash. I went too bitinstant, filled the shit out. took my cash to walmart. Well card, took the cash out. So if you have cash man, go to bitinstant fill that shit out, head to where you need too, fill out what you need to and there yea go. I used my real name on that part. It is not illegal to get bitcoins man.

OH I must have missed that part. I am a dummy sometimes. Well very well. Do I have to wait in the mail for a BitInstant card or something? Or can I just pick it up that day at a Wal Mart or whatever.

You fill out a form at bitinstant.com. They will provide you an account to 'pay a bill' to. You take cash to walmart and fill out the moneygram form there to 'pay your bill' (based on the information bitinstant has provided). There are no cards involved. Until bitinstant disintegrated a week or two ago, from deciding I wanted coins to having them took me an average of 30 minutes, and most of that was the drive time to walmart. It really is (or was anyway) instant.

If you want the SAFEST shipping, you will have to develop a drop. However, for personal amounts, straight to your house is usually fine. I've always received directly to my actual residence.

As for needles, those seem really unlikely to get caught if packaged properly at all. I don't know where you live where needles are illegal... ?

So that means that one could go to any location that handles moneygram? For instance: A nearby CVS?
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: Qthello on February 25, 2013, 03:36 am
No, there will be a drop down menu when you go to bitinstant and you choose your the location closet to you. You can take it to the place further, it shows all of them. It lists the closest. super stealth I guess if you go further. Fuck all that though.

Dirk McGirk!
Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: twopackshaker on February 25, 2013, 03:51 pm

Until bitinstant disintegrated a week or two ago, from deciding I wanted coins to having them took me an average of 30 minutes, and most of that was the drive time to walmart. It really is (or was anyway) instant.

If you want the SAFEST shipping, you will have to develop a drop. However, for personal amounts, straight to your house is usually fine. I've always received directly to my actual residence.

As for needles, those seem really unlikely to get caught if packaged properly at all. I don't know where you live where needles are illegal... ?


Don't really want to say exactly where I am. If you really wanna know, we can PM that info via PGP or something lol... just know they are impossible to get UNLESS you are a diagnosed diabetic.

Anyway, thank you all for helping me clear this issue up. I guess I will use BitInstant... but what do you mean it's disintegrated? Like it takes longer to process things now? Any alternatives to it or anything else I could use?

and @Qthello

ahahaha yeah fuck all that, indeed. Once I get this all figured out... I am gonna choose one that's pretty closeby. (read: the closest one I can find) lol

Title: Re: Preparing to make my first purchase. Advice needed.
Post by: onetwothree on February 26, 2013, 12:56 am
So that means that one could go to any location that handles moneygram? For instance: A nearby CVS?

Right. For whatever reason, BitInstant makes you choose one before it will show you the form, but once you have the form, you can take it anywhere.

Don't really want to say exactly where I am. If you really wanna know, we can PM that info via PGP or something lol... just know they are impossible to get UNLESS you are a diagnosed diabetic.

Anyway, thank you all for helping me clear this issue up. I guess I will use BitInstant... but what do you mean it's disintegrated? Like it takes longer to process things now? Any alternatives to it or anything else I could use?

and @Qthello

ahahaha yeah fuck all that, indeed. Once I get this all figured out... I am gonna choose one that's pretty closeby. (read: the closest one I can find) lol

What I mean is there bitcoin to e-mail and bitcoin to wallet options have been down for a long time now (going on two weeks I think) and their usually responsive owner has been silent and their customer service has been less responsive. They keep saying when it will be back only to miss deadline after deadline. I've heard that some people are still business as usual for deposits to Mt. Gox and other reserves. Personally I would completely stay away from them for now. If they're not scamming (which I doubt they are), they're having some serious cash flow issues or something.

If you have a Bank of America near you, there are many options to deposit cash directly there. There aren't any near me, and I'm struggling to find a convenient alternative to BitInstant. They had been so good up until now that I never had a backup plan and it's biting me in the butt.