Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Denizen on September 01, 2011, 06:31 pm

Title: First-timer security questions.
Post by: Denizen on September 01, 2011, 06:31 pm
Hey SR, this'll be my first post on the forums.

So I'll be making my first purchase soon, just as a test (those delicious looking sober brownies in the food section) and I thought I'd take some security advice before I do. As of now, I'm planning on trading some USD for BTC using ExchB, as was recommended in a post here, beginning with a deposit of USD through money-order (at Walmart, 7-11, or wherever), trading for my BTC on ExchB, sending the BTC to my wallet, and using the escrow system to buy the product. Is this money trail sufficiently anonymous to keep me out of jail, assuming the brownies were instead a large quantity of marijuana buds? Any advice on how to improve this, in terms of safety?

Also, I've seen that most people post their public PGP keys on their seller page. When during the buying process would one want to use encrypted communication (besides just using TOR)?

Thanks in advance, and I'm totally psyched to start buying through SR.
Title: Re: First-timer security questions.
Post by: acurlenamu on September 01, 2011, 08:43 pm
On transferring BTC:

Of all the advice I've read (and there is a lot, and some of it is contradictory), it seems the best way to go is to transfer your coins between several intermediate wallets before transferring to SR.  Especially if they're single use wallets.  Even better if those wallets are the Bitcoin client running on your own computer through Tor, because then there's absolutely no way to know who they belong to, and you can delete them when you're done.

Technically, it is still possible to see where the bitcoins went, though, since every individual bitcoin transaction is public and can be retrieved from the blocks.  However, SR provides a tumbler, so that makes it nearly impossible to prove anything.  And if your wallets are anonymous, then there's no telling who had those Bitcoins at any given time.

On using PGP encryption: Yes, do this!  That way the only person who can read your address is the seller, and no one else.