Say No To KYC And Protect Υοur Online Privacy
Achieving complete anonymity is a debatable concept that perhaps only a few tech-savvy individuals can achieve.
Most of us don’t possess either the tools or the knowledge to surf the web anonymously.
Still, we should enhance our security, avoid publicizing sensitive information, and not allow our private information to reach the hands of scammers. KYC and IDs will always reach the hands of scammers.
Our privacy is our security. The less information we pass to random people on the internet, the more secure we are.
Still, no matter the protection we apply, someone with a “certain set of skills “ can always trace identities and private information.
Our governments already did a lousy job in protecting our privacy when they forced the transfer of sensitive private information online through insecure procedures and websites.
A Paradox: Those That Can’t Protect Our Privacy Enforce KYC
The target of scammers is not always us personally. It can be our families, loved ones, and friends.
It is a responsibility since the target of a scam can also be someone else besides ourselves.
Scammers will use leaked private information to extract funds from friends and relatives of us. The target can be someone in our group, in our family.
Our private and sensitive information, our biometrics, is also a form of identity and can be used to deceive people close to us. I don’t want to expand further on this, but consider what we read and learn (from the news) regarding common scams and their practices.
We will value anonymity when we realize the online threats we will face and how our exposure to the internet becomes a danger.
Sometimes, we don’t know whose insecurities we might trigger, and knowing how part of our society behaves, we should probably not expose private information unless it becomes necessary or a significant opportunity emerges.
In case anyone with a certain set of skills decides to, they can find almost any identity and any information since our governments have already forced KYC’ed us, and out of incompetence, leaked our names and private data to the public, even without anyone hacking their servers.
Don’t expect them to protect your privacy or personal interests when incompetence thrives at a maximum level.
Regarding Privacy Coins
Concerning cryptocurrencies, it takes extra steps to reach a higher level of anonymity. It matters for the same reason.
Obfuscation mechanisms exist, yet some do not work as they proclaim. It all depends on the techniques used and multiple factors, while issues with some of these services surface occasionally.
Can we be certain when we use privacy coins such as Monero and ZCash?
As users, we trust developers who audited the open-source code and concluded anonymity indeed is strong in Monero, ZCash, or anything else. This is what all those programmers that studied the Monero and ZCash code had been telling us since day one. Privacy coins, complete privacy and anonymity, obfuscation methods, and how nobody can trace transactions.
Still, take a look at all these issues and bugs of Monero and think about what more could be there that is not public yet:
- Monero Bug May Impact Transaction Privacy: Team Reveals (Jul 2021)
- Monero Developers Have Patched the ‘Burning Bug’ (Sep 2018)
- A bug in the Monero wallet balance can enable theft from exchanges (Jul 2018)
- Monero Transactions History Can Be Revealed and Exposed: Research (April 2017)
When Europol claims Monero transactions are untraceable, perhaps being vigilant and suspicious is wise.
Some cryptocurrencies claim to contain anonymity features, but the claims are refuted with time.
Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and other UTXO-based blockchains provide transactional pseudonymity. We are not entirely anonymous when transacting with Bitcoin. The blockchain is transparent. There are Coinjoin methods that create a layer of obfuscation, increasing privacy, yet they also come with drawbacks, and quite often researchers will track the route of funds.
Most blockchains are public and open to any researcher to interpret the route of funds, however, this is a difficult task to perform manually with a simple blockchain explorer.
Blockchain analytic tools exist and can easily connect wallets. Still, most of these tools are not public and come with a cost. Note that I don’t suggest downloading random analytics software from google searches, but DYOR if anyone absolutely needs such a tool, which usually comes at a cost as well.
In Conclusion
Online privacy is common sense. Before Facebook, privacy was considered valuable, yet with the influx of billions of users, the websites they discovered were not privacy-oriented, thus all these new people on the internet believed this was the proper approach.
For those before the Facebook era, it was quite the opposite, always. We value anonymity. It gives us peace of mind, even when we know we can’t achieve total anonymity.
Perhaps internet users understand today better the privacy and anonymity issues, yet, some have to sell their image and manage to make it a lucrative business.
Everyone has a plan, I guess, even when this is just a need for acceptance by strangers online, not for the content we publish, the code we develop, or the creations we want to present, but for anything pointless as the physical appearance.
Cover Photo: by “ Bernard Hermant” on Unsplash
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Originally published at https://read.cash.
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