Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: Ohyeahdude10 on April 11, 2013, 03:17 am

Title: Am I safe?
Post by: Ohyeahdude10 on April 11, 2013, 03:17 am
I am a newbie who has bought from the SR. I made some mistakes. First mistake, (On the Tor network) I went to get some bitcoins from bitinstant using my real personal information on the bitcoin-to-address option, printed out the receipt from my computer, and went into town to fill a moneygram slip with all my personal information on it, then I get the bitcoins sent to one of my wallets and then sent on to  another wallet and then to my SR account where I made my first purchase for a product and I sent them my address without using pgp, but got the product. Second mistake, (On the Tor Network) went to bitinstant, but this time I used the bitcoin-to-email option using my tormail account and filling out that page with my real personal information, printed out the receipt from my computer, went into to town to fill out a moneygram slip using all real personal information, went to my tormail account, went on the url that was attached to an email where my bitcoins were located at and sent them directly to my SR account, Am I Safe?
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: martine on April 11, 2013, 03:22 am
More or less. There is a clear financial record of you buying those BTC, but if you're buying for personal consumption nobody is going to be pulling your finances. If they make a case on you for possession it's going to be based on something physical (intercepted package, tipoff, etc.)

Now, if you're reselling or otherwise a drug dealer, I'd really try to keep my finances clean of EVERYTHING drug related, because they will poke around in there.

Dont sweat it. Youre not the first to do it, and tracking BTC transactions is still a pain in the ass and not something worth the money to bust some dude for an 8ball.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: canasian on April 11, 2013, 03:26 am
I would say more than safe really...
sending it to multiple wallet is taking more caution than most I would say
at least to those around here ha ha
matter of fact you are making me feel very insecure  :o
I may be being obnoxiously uncaring... ::)
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: YetAnotherWhiteGuy on April 11, 2013, 03:27 am
It's tough to get around staying anonymous getting bitcoins, I had that issue with bitinstant.

I'm not sure how much this helps you, but I actually picked up a laptop with a broken screen dirty cheap months ago. using the external monitor hookup, I set it up for remote desktop connections, and then shoved it in a closet in my house.

Remote connect in, and got it set up with Tor & TorGuard, which automatically will boot up and have no network connection till I sit down and set all that crap up.

Making sure it's got an IP from Sweden, I downloaded a new bitcoin wallet. This is my "send off to Silk Road" wallet.

So now I'm not too paranoid with my private info when I get bitcoins sent to my normal wallet on my normal computer, and just shoot them over to my other bitcoin wallet that will never have an IP address connected to me.

It's an option if you're paranoid. And if there's one thing I learned about the internet, is anything you post with an inaccuracy (from a fact or misspelled word), it will get pointed out. So let's see if someone points out the flaw in my 2nd laptop with remote connection here.

Oh, and I want to add when I picked it up, it did have a lovely 'restore factory settings" option, which I did do before putting it on my network.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: anonypunk on April 11, 2013, 03:28 am
I would say no. If I were you I would follow the instructions for setting up and using SR and there is a whole thread about it with great links for all the software you will need. Some people use Tails live USB OS or Liberte' which goes on a USB stick and boots from that into Tor. I would also go and create new accounts for everything you need to use with new email as well. To be a little more safe you could always wipe your hard drive to binary with DBAN, Really though I think that if you were able to get into SR then you are at least smart enough to read the stickies at the top of the pages for newbs. Read a lot more than you already have. Don't order anything until you learn how computers operate and how information is stored and sent. You'll save yourself some jail time and probably others as well.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: wsd23 on April 11, 2013, 03:30 am
You're fine. Buying BTCs isnt a crime (yet) so all anyone would be able to see is a record of you sending money to bitinstant, nothing illegal about that :). Not using PGP is a problem, especially because it links you (your address) to a drug buy with no guarantee that only the vendor is seeing it. PGP is such an easy thing to use and only takes about 30 seconds to use each time.

I would stop visiting clear-net sites, especially bitinstant on TOR as many exit nodes are known and that is a huge red flag to anyone that something 'suspicious' is going on. If you are truly paranoid about just buying the coins, find a open Wifi spot and buy it from there.

No one is ever 100% 'safe' as in the end you have to trust the vendor with your address, but really there hasn't been much LE attention (yet) on SR and BTCs in general, outside of parents calling the police about getting drugs in the mail.

If anyone asks what the coins are for, say you are donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation or something boring like that. Plenty of 'legit' sites are accepting BTCs now.

You will be fine. But use PGP seriously.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: 7Kz2 on April 11, 2013, 03:43 am
These guys are just going to scare you

You're fine just don't do stupid shit again.

Buy some bitcoins legit, send them around, send to SR.

Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: jjds101 on April 11, 2013, 04:22 am
Once you've bought the bitcoins, the trail pretty much ends there.  That's part of the point -- anonymous transactions.  Sending MTGox -> personal wallet -> SR is more than enough.

MG asks for ID sometimes so there really isn't any way around that.  Buying bitcoins is a completely legal and legitimate transaction.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: wsd23 on April 11, 2013, 04:41 am
Once you've bought the bitcoins, the trail pretty much ends there.  That's part of the point -- anonymous transactions.  Sending MTGox -> personal wallet -> SR is more than enough.

MG asks for ID sometimes so there really isn't any way around that.  Buying bitcoins is a completely legal and legitimate transaction.

Well not entirely true, all bitcoin transactions are 'tracked' through the blockchain, which is fundamental to the existence of the coins. Without a clear record of where the coins came from, it would be impossible to tell if someone had a legit coin, or just one they had created. Fortunately all of the data is rather obfuscated and isnt very interesting, just a time, amount and IP address, but there IS a record that exists. You can find them at blockchain.info and find your own payments just by searching for the transaction ID. Thankfully however its fairly easy to game the system, simply passing the coins to different wallets works well enough, and SR I believe 'washes' the coins for you when they are in escrow bouncing them from wallet to wallet to further hide the real transaction.

So while ya the info is MOSTLY anonymous, that doesn't mean it is theoretically impossible to trace.

Be safe out there :)
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: jokersmoker19901217 on April 11, 2013, 05:12 am
Any one in Canada can use Canadianbitcoins.com or Cavirtex.com they both allow you to do anonymous bank deposits using just a email and certain deposit amount to identify it. Iv done it many times and never had a problem, you can have them sent to a wallet before silk road. Also cavirtex.com gives you a wallet number linked to a anonymous account so you can set your back up wallet to send them there to be sold in the event the road goes down
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: drgreentrees on April 11, 2013, 05:33 am
You're safe.  Nobody is going to use a battering ram on your door the next time you log on to SR...or maybe they *are* going to use a battering ram on your door...hmmmm
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: sanrio on April 11, 2013, 06:04 am
just learn how to use PGP  :)
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: DrMc on April 11, 2013, 11:26 am
Im glad things are so much easier in Australia , we can just make a cash deposit into the bitcoin providers bank account at the teller. No ID or personal details required.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: idgafos44 on April 12, 2013, 05:11 am
there are ways to do that in the US.  i do it every week.
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: lagzor on April 12, 2013, 05:19 am
It sounds like your safe and sound :)
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: nndt on April 12, 2013, 06:05 am
is anyone ever really safe?

you'll probably be fine
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: jokersmoker19901217 on April 17, 2013, 04:56 am
Personally  I think that if your smart and some what careful most small fish have nothing to worry about. Even if they could start catching a lot of people they would be far more likely to target large buyers and sellers
Title: Re: Am I safe?
Post by: TechKnow on April 17, 2013, 05:03 am
you'll be fine