Bitcoin drug deals could haunt people for years

https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-drug-deals-silk-road-blockchain/

by HHend • 8 years ago

64 71 8 years ago

empath75• 8 years ago

I doubt prosecutors in the us at least are gonna care that you ordered shrooms from the Silk Road ten years ago. Might come up if they want to get a security clearance or run for office, though.

nikanj• 8 years ago

The press might

vuln• 8 years ago

Anything for a clickbait headline to drive ad revenue.

nkrisc• 8 years ago

It doesn't matter who might care. If someone does care in the future they won't have much trouble depending on how careful you were.

acdha2• 8 years ago

You never know how their orders may change, however. We’re seeing people deported for minor crimes committed decades ago, before they were legal adults, and most people would have said that wouldn’t happen until the last year or two.

Another, in some ways more important, point is the reminder that all of the people who spent years spamming forums about how bitcoin is secure & anonymous are not good sources of advice or analysis and whatever they’re promoting now should be treated very skeptically. You can still find people recommending that people in countries with oppressive governments should make blackmarket transactions in a public ledger!

pc862• 8 years ago

We're seeing people deported for minor crimes committed decades ago, before they were legal adults

    [citation needed]

Not that I don't believe you but I honestly haven't heard of this.

gtsteve• 8 years ago

Perhaps not but you could buy more than drugs on Silk Road - counterfeit currency, fake ids, etc.

Broken_Hippo• 8 years ago

I doubt prosecutors in the us at least are gonna care that you ordered shrooms from the Silk Road ten years ago.

Unless it is an election year or they don't like you. This last case is especially true if you live in a small town. Or you get in trouble years later for something unrelated and they want to portray you as a lifelong criminal.

I know a dude that got in trouble as a minor. But generally got his life together afterwards. Worked, paid his parents back the money he (they) were charged, went to school, and wanted to join the military. They wanted his record expunged (sealed in a way that it never happened). The prosecutor decided he hadn't paid enough for his crime. Had he done any of this stuff and they could prove it, he'd have had to go to court over it, I'm pretty sure. Luckily the judge didn't agree and the dude got his wish (though never joined the military).

That type of petty shit is pretty rampant.

amelius• 8 years ago

... the evidence of that drug deal may still be hanging around in plain view of law enforcement, even years after the Silk Road was torn off the dark web.

How about your delivery address being in the merchant's raided servers?

nukeop3• 8 years ago

You don't seriously think people order drugs to their own addresses, right?

buildbuildbuild• 8 years ago

I would not be surprised if, despite publicly harping about solid OPSEC, many users get tired and negligent.

jstanley3• 8 years ago

Where else? If I order drugs to somebody else's address, they'll get the drugs and not me.

cvsh• 8 years ago

The guides on places like /r/DarkNetMarkets do actually recommend shipping to your own address, under your own name.

alasdair_• 8 years ago

I'm sure a lot of people did. Getting caught using a fake address, stealing mail etc. is clear evidence of a crime.

Getting mail at your house? Not something you can prevent and it would likely be easy to claim ignorance of the contents.

megaman22• 8 years ago

Drug users are not always known for stellar opsec...

herbst3• 8 years ago

If you live in a civilized country and the police is not known to shoot random people i would say its a fair risk to take for some.

SWIM told them he doesnt know about this package and showed them how his address is public for anyone due to owning domains. SWIM only paid a low fee for the little weed they found at his home and was at work in time.

gomox2• 8 years ago

Consider this:

People order pills online on an anonymous site designed for people to be untrackable, using anonymous methods of payment, and then ingest the aforementioned pills they received in the mail from China without a second thought.

I would say compared to getting poisoned with unknown substances, trouble with the law seems like a distant secondary issue.

dfischer• 8 years ago

That’s exactly what people do.

xya34532• 8 years ago

Plausible deniability.

dmix2• 8 years ago

Seriously, I've never heard of anyone getting arrested from some home address on a server or bitcoin data. At the very minimum the police would need to do what's called a "controlled delivery" to the persons house and confirm the recipient identity and confirm they are receiving the package. Then they'll have a warrant prearranged and verify they opened the package upon entry into the house.

Alternatively, they'll nab someone as they pick up a package at a post office and driving home.

Even in that advanced scenario the people still have a significant degree of plausible deniability, as anyone can send anyone else a letter. So there better be some good proof the person was also the person who bought the Bitcoin and good proof that it was sent to some dealer/drug site.

Plus most of those sites required the user PGP encrypt their address when sending it via the web app, so it's not necessarily accessible on the server even if they have the raw DB.

This article is spreading complete FUD.

philfrasty• 8 years ago

I read in a different article that the creator of another darknet market ran their entire operation on a WooCommerce store with a nice MySQL database...of course carefully „preserving“ that precious customer data.

dmix2• 8 years ago

You're missing a big part of how these Bitcoin markets work. People would use PGP encryption when sending their addresses through the web app to the dealer/vendor, the vendors PGP public key.

So even if law enforcement got access to the database they wouldn't necessarily have any customer addresses, except for the minority of people who got lazy.

nukeop3• 8 years ago

Ok, so just move to Monero. Or use a mixer. Mindblowing, I know.

dkersten2• 8 years ago

Or Zcash perhaps, I guess?

mtgx• 8 years ago

Don't forget to use shielded addresses, though.

Cthulhu_• 8 years ago

Or don't do drugs, drugs are bad, m'kay? I mean come on, go to a shady site, do shady business, know things are illegal.

Casseres3• 8 years ago

Mixers are a bad idea. First, you have to trust that there's no collusion with any entities. Secondly, you have to hope that you don't get tainted coins in return.

A more thorough explanation:

https://moneroforcash.com/monero-vs-dash-vs-zcash-vs-bitcoin...

nukeop3• 8 years ago

I'm sorry but you've been misinformed. This article is also factually incorrect in many regards. There are no "tainted" coins. For example this excerpt from your article is completely false:

"Not all Bitcoins are equal and have the same value. Some Bitcoins have been blacklisted and blocked by several entities, making those coins less valuable than the rest. If you receive Bitcoins that were used in the past for illegal purposes, then your Bitcoins could be blacklisted even though you had nothing to do with the illegal activity."

Bitcoins are interchangeable and indistinguishable; exactly alike. They are not physical objects and carry no identifying marks. Their only property is their amount.

Invictus0• 8 years ago

Did I misread the article or does they're entire hack consist solely of scraping the internet for places you may have posted your public address? This is the oldest trick in the book.

gmueckl• 8 years ago

I think you need to read the story differently: even when using only such a low bar, you can find lots of evidence. As the article mentions, there are other known ways to find suspicious Bitcoin wallets and their owners on top of that.

ineedasername• 8 years ago

That's how I interpreted it: even using the simplest and easiest methods, they were able to tie transactions to individuals.

ssharp2• 8 years ago

You might already regret that decision, for any number of reasons. After all, the four bitcoins you spent on that bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms would now be worth about as much as an Alfa Romeo.

It's not like they just happened to have some bitcoins and realized they could buy drugs with them. They only bought the bitcoins so they could buy drugs.

icebraining• 8 years ago

Plus, the dollars the author had in their wallet could also have been used for buying Bitcoins which would now be worth an Alfa Romeo, so everyone can regret their purchasing decisions, not just people who already held Bitcoins.

WillReplyfFood• 8 years ago

Why not circular causality - the losses made with buying drugs with bitcoins, drove them to take drugs in the first place..

maxerickson• 8 years ago

Skimming the paper it seems that many of the people they identified were not exactly operational masterminds — they tweeted the addresses linked to their illicit transactions.

irpapakons• 8 years ago

related podcast episode: https://gimletmedia.com/episode/115-bitcoin-hunter/

LyndsySimon• 8 years ago

This isn't a "drug" problem, this is a "government" problem.

What happens if the US federal government goes authoritarian right-wing, and you get raided because you donated some bitcoin to WikiLeaks in 2012?

What happens is they go authoritarian left-wing, and you get raided because you donated to WikiLeaks in 2016?

Having permanently-visible transactions is a huge liability; we don't know what the future holds.

Daviddd• 8 years ago

There was an similar post on bitcoincommerce.nl its written in Dutch though.

Bitcoin drug deals could haunt people for years

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