Saki

joined 1 year ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Trocador shows it explicitly whether a specific CEX is no-log or requiting IP logging, which you can choose. This new thing doesn’t have TOS nor Privacy Policy to begin with. Yet as long as you use onion, logging by the front-end is rather irrelevant.

Even if the front-end is not logging anything (which no one can verify), a CEX behind it surely records the tx and retains it as required by laws (some of them might be less than perfectly legal and might not record anything, though that would mean a different kind of risk). Using a CEX is more or less risky, be it Trocador or something else. Some may think that an instant swap by CEX is convenient. Personally I prefer DEX, even though it may be less convenient, even though Monero.town itself has an official affiliate link to Trocador too.

[–] Saki@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago

Asia might potentially be a better idea (not Japan or Korea though)

You mean, like Hong Kong, or India, maybe? What do you mean by “not Japan or Korea though”? I’d feel China would be worse. Privacy-focused services tend to be pricey anyway, both in Europe and in the US, and the price comparison is tricky as EUR/USD can move weirdly. If you’re talking about Njalla (Sweden), it’s indeed rather expensive.

Although France seems to be generally anti-cryptography, of course you wouldn’t go to jail just because you use Tails. There was this notorious incident related to French activists & Proton, though. Also, the Netherlands can be scary. They arrested a developer of Tornado Cash, right? Although, those things have nothing to do with VPS!

[–] Saki@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago

Thank you so much! These minor details are really helpful :D Happy holidays!

[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago

Hey this is not a popularity contest! People are not reading it because they like OP. They’re simply interested in some general info, not someone’s personal opinions. Besides, the small-numbered “score” (called upvote?) like 5 or 10 or 15 is not significant. We’re simply sharing links for general awareness!

Here in Monero town you might be misunderstanding that yours was ignored (which is NOT true!) because I happened to post a similar link… But your cross post to the same link at !Privacy@lemmy.ml got a low score too, certainly not my fault.

Many people read whatever if interested, but not necessarily upvote, so don’t worry about score :)

Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. You have the right to work, but for work's sake only.

[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It’s true that the EU is getting “difficult”. Ironically, the US (without GDPR) can be better, where the right to anonymous speech is more or less protected (although, of course, US hosting companies in general are not good for that).

IncogNet is a good example, where you can get a domain anonymously, just like from Njalla but the price being much affordable. Not only that, they’ll set up an onion/I2P version for your website for free. (This is not a recommendation, though. DYOR.)

Floki was once famous but, yeah… they’re getting a bit less popular now after the Covid things. It’s not Iceland and Seychelles based; basically it’s a German company, having servers in Iceland, Finland, Romania, and the Netherlands. Iceland was once very popular, but anymore. Using a .is domain now assuming it’s “safer” is a bit yesterday.

Especially, be aware of France: they’re like “you use encryption because you have something to hide, doing something bad.” Also, you might want to avoid EU domains (.fr etc.) in general: check about NIS2, so called “Thick Whois“ to see what this means. For example, you can’t get a .nl anonymous domain anymore (a recent change); a similar trend being expected soon in other EU registrars/resellers i.e. “domain KYC”.

PS: Incognet is based on Fran's (Frantech/BuyVM) in Canada, which has been generally trusted and has some good track record. One might want to consider BuyVM etc. too (Not a recommendation, DYOR).

PPS: Incognet accepts xmr, but you can’t do crypto-related things like mining on their servers. A negative point for some of us.

[–] Saki@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Exactly how does you activate it? Ordering itself is kyc-free (and even Tor-friendly?) but you’ll need to show your IP to activate it, of course?

[–] Saki@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago

@stealths@monero.town Thanks for clarification!

  1. For example, a user in China can buy a card from you, redeem (activate) it and use it internationally, except they can’t use it in shopping at an online shop China?
  2. A user in Pakistan can not activate it and use it at all, though others can use it for shopping internationally incl. at at online shop in Pakistan.

It that what this means? I assume activation then includes GeoIP? I’m very happy that a few user reviews are positive anyway. You know, some “services/companies” advertising here tend to be a bit sketchy or iffy. Your prepaid card business seems a honest one, at least now! Thanks for joining monero.town :) I hope this can be convenient & fruitful for both users and you 🐱

[–] Saki@monero.town 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Visa International (Just fyi): The supported country list by Stealths and the similar list by Tremendous are slightly different. The differences (if real) might be mostly relevant to Chinese users.

These three are included in Stealths’ list, but not included in Tremendous’ list:

China, Hong Kong (*Taiwan is in both lists), Swaziland

These countries/areas are not inluded in S’s list, but are included in T’s list:

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Congo (*Flag of Congo-Brazzaville is shown), Eswatini, Pakistan, Panama, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon

[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Pure P2P may survive. It’d be less convenient, though, if privacy coins were outlawed and business companies (e.g. hosting) couldn’t legally accept them!

[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

When trying to swap something to XMR (esp. a large amount? or at a small CEX?), it seems that there is always a possibility that the CEX (which may claim you can swap any amount) may not actually have enough XMR.

(They might be offering to sell Monero, when they don’t have enough.)

PS. Historically there are a few warnings: https://metager.de/meta/meta.ger3?eingabe=Exolix%20Monero

[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

You clearly said: “Unlike others exchange aggregator Intercambio is created by Trusted Monero Community members” — implying yours is better, more trusted than Trocador.

If you’re “friendly”, you can ask, “I don’t understand what you mean. Could you explain?“ — Saying “Yes theres uBlock, and ?” doesn’t sound too friendly, not willing to learn new things. It’s irrelevant whether you personally dislike me or not; if what you do is honest and good, your business might be successful. We’ll see.

[–] Saki@monero.town 1 points 11 months ago (3 children)

See also: https://monero.town/post/942859 How to sell $300k+ Monero without origin of funds?

 

the White House has, for the past decade, provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure

the program takes advantage of numerous “loopholes” in federal privacy law

the DAS program has been used to produce location information on criminal suspects and their known associates, a practice deemed unconstitutional without a warrant

(This website is a bit annoying.)

9
Cock.li is back open for public registration (Onion-capable free email provider) (rurcblzhmdk22kttfkel2zduhyu3r6to7knyc7wiorzrx5gw4c3lftad.onion)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Saki@monero.town to c/privacy@monero.town
 

See https://monero.town/post/968066

Onion http://rurcblzhmdk22kttfkel2zduhyu3r6to7knyc7wiorzrx5gw4c3lftad.onion/

This free email provider is not for everyone. Sometimes a Cockmail address is not accepted to register something. Sometimes, though not often, another email provider may indiscriminately block email from Cock.li. Afaik Cock.li<->Proton, Cock.li<->Tuta work.


PS: Admin, Vincent Canfield @vc@shitposter.club

 

See also: Fifth Circuit says law enforcement doesn’t need warrants to search phones at the border https://monero.town/post/402125

 

The app store “collects and sends data […] This includes information like device model, brand, country, timezone, screen size, view events, click events, logtime of events, and a unique KID ID,”

Hancock didn’t return the tablet to her daughter until after making changes to protect her daughter’s privacy.

[She] even installed Tor, a browser that is designed to protect the anonymity of its user.

An awesome Mom, like Mrs. Roberts from xkcd!

 

EDIT: Don’t take this too seriously; do not actually send a donation (unless you really want to, like admiring “Nice photoshopping!” “Thanks for the fun pic”). While it’s entertaining and thought-provoking, using their work this way is ethically questionable too. As @z0rg0n pointed out, one could even see this as a scam. Although it’s a fine work and freedom of expression is more important, this may more properly belong to “Memes”.


EDIT2: This post and “cool if real” by @alphonse https://monero.town/post/1122495 were created almost at the same time. That was a coincidental post conflict; @alphonse’s post was actually earlier by about 1 hour!


Is someone crowdfunding a Monero ad in India’s economic newspaper?

Interestingly, a Monero ad could be circulating in India’s traditional English newspaper: The Economic Times. The pseudonymous Stoic, author of “The Monero Standard,” shared a picture of the newspaper’s November 16th edition. In the picture, it is possible to see the paper’s opened front page with a large ad about XMR.

“Monero transactions respect your privacy. Can you say that about the INDIAN RUPEE or the U.S. DOLLAR?”

Moreover, the image also includes a QR-Code for donations in “XMR only,” which suggests its owner is expecting to crowdfund what was spent for this supposed insertion.

 

A storefront, said Ortis, is a fake business or entity, either online or bricks-and-mortar, set up by police or intelligence agencies.

The plan, he said, was to have criminals use the storefront — an online end-to-end encryption service called Tutanota — to allow authorities to collect intelligence about them.

Tutanota (now Tuta) denies this: https://tuta.com/blog/tutanota-not-a-honeypot

 

the onchain activities of the attackers were monitored and […] action was taken to freeze the wallets held by the attackers by working with other cryptocurrency exchanges

a member of the cryptocurrency community questioned how Binance could freeze these funds despite the fact that cryptocurrencies are marketed as not being confiscable by third parties

Changpeng Zhao […] said that the whole thing is a matter of balance. […] CZ implied that a solution to events such as theft cannot be found in a system that cannot be completely frozen.

CZ stated that if users use privacy coins such as Monero (XMR), such freezes will not occur, but the stolen funds cannot be returned.

Cf.

PS. See also: Bitcoin can be traced, If you use XMR, then there isn’t much anyone can do https://monero.town/post/1069626

 

regulatory scrutiny is shifting towards privacy coins […] Understanding how they will be implemented in systems that are decentralized, where the developers and maintainers often maintain anonymity, is complex.

E.g. Bisq, Haveno

compliance with these regulations becomes a paradox for such projects since the crux of privacy coins lies in their ability to mask transaction details, which inherently contradicts the essence of regulations […] Therefore, achieving full regulatory compliance for privacy coins may sometimes seem impossible. […] in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been proactive in educating consumers about the risks associated with privacy coins but has not implemented bans or specific regulations concerning them.

in the United States, proposed legislation such as the STABLE Act could further extend the regulatory framework […] it’s plausible that the provisions of the STABLE Act […] could potentially mean that transactions involving privacy coins would need some form of identity verification

A prime example of a regulatory shift impacting privacy coins is the European Union’s Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) […] these platforms are now obliged to implement customer due diligence measures, […] verifying user identities and monitoring transactions for any signs of activity.

Potentially:

  • Alice (unhosted wallet) sends coins to Bob (CEX) -> Alice is also KYCed by the CEX
  • Alice (CEX) sends coins to Bob (unhosted) -> Bob is KYCed too
 

Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach

https://lemmy.world/post/7993453 i.e. https://monero.town/post/1045387

While there are typical comments like crypto=scam “You have to be quite stupid to support crypto in 2023”, there are also replies like these (with which more people seem to agree, unexpectedly):

It’s designed to protect anyone using it - even attackers. That’s the price to pay for having privacy. The alternative is an Orwellian dystopia.

If you’re going to use Luna, FTX, and NFTs as arguments about something like Monero, […] you probably don’t really understand any of them.

It’s a bit odd that such a discussion is more active on a different Lemmy instance than here, but it’s interesting to hear honest opinions of various people about the incident, about Monero. Maybe your views are different from them, from mine. For example, one person states there that while they know exactly what Monaro is, they’re still skeptical.

 

Collateral wallet is 2-3 multi-signature wallet but it doesn't have to be Monero. Bitcoin multi-signature is much more tested and very ease to use using Electrum or similar.

Option two on this topic would be to use Monero multi-signature to keep Collateral.

-3
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Saki@monero.town to c/monero@monero.town
 

Somewhat curious, though not like using xmr speculatively.

  • 2023-11-02T15:57 CCS Wallet Incident · Issue #916 · monero-project/meta · GitHub
  • 2023-11-04T00:39 [Moonstone Research] Postmortem of Monero CCS Hack: A Transaction Graph Analysis (Dated Nov 03)
  • 2023-11-05T07:20 [One of the earliest media reports] Monerujo Wallet User Drains Monero’s CCS Wallet: Report - Coin Edition

Some of the media reports are negatively confusing, like saying the Monero network is defective. Date-Time in UTC.

Edit: Moonstone Research -> 2023-11-04T00:39 was based on the server response headers (last-modified). Apparently the blog post was created about 1 hour earlier (the link was posted on Github at 2023-11-03 23:50).

 

These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic

This enables the government of any EU member state to issue website certificates for interception and surveillance

https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2023/qualified-web-authentication-certificates-qwacs-in-eidas/

The browser ecosystem is global, not EU-bounded. Once a mechanism like QWACs is implemented in browsers, it is open to abuse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS

The proposal would force internet companies to place a backdoor in web browsers to let them perform a man-in-the-middle attack, deceiving users into thinking that they were communicating with a server they requested, when, in fact, they would be communicating directly with the EU government. […] If passed, the EU would be able to hack into any internet-enabled device, reading any sensitive or encrypted contents without the user's knowledge

See also: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/11/2/eu-digital-identity-framework-eidas-another-kind-of-chat-control/

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