Great tools for anonymity

[Simon4466]

As this is my first post in the mentor group section I thought I might share some tools I like (and most/more are available on sites such as Privacy Tools: Fight Mass Surveillance with Encryption).

VPNs:
A proper VPN is important, as when you use it, you should be able to trust it completely.
The one I personally use is IVPN, it is registered in Gibraltar (no 9-eyes nation). It does not require any information when signing up (and when paying with cash via mail / monero they store 0 identifiable info on you).
Another great option is Mullvad (from what I heard more or less the same), but I have never used it.

Encryption:
Although there are many tools which get the trick done, I like using Veracrypt as it uses on-the-fly-encryption. As everything has its pros and cons, feel free to look into this yourself. It functions by creating a file, which can then be loaded in Veracrypt and decrypted via your password. After which, it allows you to view the encrypted files via what shows up as a partition on your hard drive.

Crypto exchanges:
Some notable ones:
1. Fixedfloat FixedFloat | Instant cryptocurrency exchange - Very easy to use, however, not fully decentralized and may block/freeze payments when they suspect fraud. No KYC for (nearly) all payments. Does save your IP address (from what I understand).
2. Tradeogre - https://tradeogre.com/markets - No KYC and fully decentralized (but more difficult to work with).
3. Majestic Bank - MajesticBank - No KYC, although never used
4. Unstoppableswap - UnstoppableSwap - No KYC, fully P2P and trustless. Only BTC --> Monero.

Domain names:
Njal.la - Already discussed on the forum, quite happy with them.

Fiat to crypto (NO KYC):
Some Swiss crypto exchanges allow users to buy crypto with "no KYC". Keep in mind that this does mean some KYC as can be shown below.
1. MtPelerin - Mt Pelerin | Buy & sell cryptocurrencies, made in Switzerland - Needs your phone number, email address, and needs you to sign your crypto wallet with a random string it proposes. Afterwards, you can make no-KYC crypto purchases up until a certain amount. Haven't used it yet, but when looking at its rates for bank transfers it seems very good!
2. Bity - Bity | Buy, Sell and Trade Bitcoin, Ether, and more - Although much the same as MtPelerin, it does obligate you to sign your IBAN on your blockchain address. Something I am not comfortable with.

I did not find these in the Resources section but thought they were too good to leave out. If you have any tools to help your privacy/anonymity online, please feel free to share!

Last edited: Jun 6, 2022

 

[RDuke]

Mullvad is awesome in my opinion, and yes you can also pay with monero and they store literally 0 data from you

Tradeogre is also my favorite no kyc cex exchange, only thing is low volume but for small amounts is great

Last edited: Jun 6, 2022

 

[MiddleEuroAsia]

Good list, I would just change privacytools to privacyguides, the reason being is the former team of privacy tools migrated to privacy guides because the current admin/owner of privaytools is a moron and knows nothing about the Everyday threats that OPSEC people face in the digital era.
So use privacy guides, it's more optimal, technical and up-to date than privaytools.

Last edited: Jun 7, 2022

 

[JohnnyDoe]

UnstoppableSwap seems dead.

Can anyone share his experience with Bity | Buy, Sell and Trade Bitcoin, Ether, and more And Mt Pelerin | Buy & sell cryptocurrencies, made in Switzerland for 5-6 figures amounts?

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[MiddleEuroAsia]

JohnnyDoe said:
UnstoppableSwap seems dead.
Click to expand...

Nope, it's still under development. visit the r/monero subreddit and chat with the team behind the Comit project, and you will find that unstoppable swap is still under development.
Also no idea why anyone would trade their XMR for BTC that might be tainted, it's better to use instant swap exchanges such as fixedfloat, changenow....etc. at least you get your coins from exchanges that are "trusted" to some extent. or just use cakewallet, a great non custodial mobile wallet that has fixedfloat and changenow built in and you can exchange your coins in a Semi-trustless manner instantly.

 

[mezoon]

Simon4466 said:
As this is my first post in the mentor group section I thought I might share some tools I like (and most/more are available on sites such as Privacy Tools: Fight Mass Surveillance with Encryption).

VPNs:
A proper VPN is important, as when you use it, you should be able to trust it completely.
The one I personally use is IVPN, it is registered in Gibraltar (no 9-eyes nation). It does not require any information when signing up (and when paying with cash via mail / monero they store 0 identifiable info on you).
Another great option is Mullvad (from what I heard more or less the same), but I have never used it.

Encryption:
Although there are many tools which get the trick done, I like using Veracrypt as it uses on-the-fly-encryption. As everything has its pros and cons, feel free to look into this yourself. It functions by creating a file, which can then be loaded in Veracrypt and decrypted via your password. After which, it allows you to view the encrypted files via what shows up as a partition on your hard drive.

Crypto exchanges:
Some notable ones:
1. Fixedfloat FixedFloat | Instant cryptocurrency exchange - Very easy to use, however, not fully decentralized and may block/freeze payments when they suspect fraud. No KYC for (nearly) all payments. Does save your IP address (from what I understand).
2. Tradeogre - https://tradeogre.com/markets - No KYC and fully decentralized (but more difficult to work with).
3. Majestic Bank - MajesticBank - No KYC, although never used
4. Unstoppableswap - UnstoppableSwap - No KYC, fully P2P and trustless. Only BTC --> Monero.

Domain names:
Njal.la - Already discussed on the forum, quite happy with them.

Fiat to crypto (NO KYC):
Some Swiss crypto exchanges allow users to buy crypto with "no KYC". Keep in mind that this does mean some KYC as can be shown below.
1. MtPelerin - Mt Pelerin | Buy & sell cryptocurrencies, made in Switzerland - Needs your phone number, email address, and needs you to sign your crypto wallet with a random string it proposes. Afterwards, you can make no-KYC crypto purchases up until a certain amount. Haven't used it yet, but when looking at its rates for bank transfers it seems very good!
2. Bity - Bity | Buy, Sell and Trade Bitcoin, Ether, and more - Although much the same as MtPelerin, it does obligate you to sign your IBAN on your blockchain address. Something I am not comfortable with.

I did not find these in the Resources section but thought they were too good to leave out. If you have any tools to help your privacy/anonymity online, please feel free to share!
Click to expand...

Fixedfloat is a UK company and has exchanged information with police.

Majestic bank is owned by very shady people it is a canadian corporation you be judge how anonymous is that. Their support is s**t 5 days wait time for response when they answer stupid questions are asked if you talk to their support on telegram you'll see how bad they truly are some teenager kid answers questions with 'bro' very unprofessional and dodgy. They add fees on top in the exchange rate and many believe they are going to rug pull because the low fees are unsustainable! Got added on several places forums groups with full verification because they paid off people. Take it from someone who knows avoid at all cost

njal is one of the shittiest providers. As soon as you start having issues with them or they start getting attacked you won't be able to operate your service at all. Look for other alternatives there are loads out there

IVPN stores logs and shares with authorities.

MiddleEuroAsia said:
Nope, it's still under development. visit the r/monero subreddit and chat with the team behind the Comit project, and you will find that unstoppable swap is still under development.
Also no idea why anyone would trade their XMR for BTC that might be tainted, it's better to use instant swap exchanges such as fixedfloat, changenow....etc. at least you get your coins from exchanges that are "trusted" to some extent. or just use cakewallet, a great non custodial mobile wallet that has fixedfloat and changenow built in and you can exchange your coins in a Semi-trustless manner instantly.
Click to expand...

Changenow also exchanges information with police very well known same as fixedfloat. Use your own wallet Monero GUI nothing else if you want security

Last edited: Jun 10, 2022

 

[Simon4466]

mezoon said:
IVPN stores logs and shares with authorities.
Click to expand...

Do you maybe have a source for this? Definitely agree with what you write about fixedfloat for instance, but I did not find any info on this.

 

[clemens]

mezoon said:
IVPN stores logs and shares with authorities.
Click to expand...

where did you read that?

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One of my favorit articles in Mentor Group ~ Sending money anonymously archieve Financial Anonymity

 

[mezoon]

Simon4466 said:
Do you maybe have a source for this? Definitely agree with what you write about fixedfloat for instance, but I did not find any info on this.
Click to expand...

clemens said:
where did you read that?
Click to expand...

I know it from someone that used them and got in trouble

Some more information

Law Enforcement Legal Process Guidelines - Way for authorities to get information and process requests
IVPN Privacy Policy - IVPN is subject to EU law. The rest they might say whatever but they can be asked to log same as Proton was made by swiss authorities although not in EU technically
Gibraltar is british overseas territory and while on paper it is on own instance don't be fooled information can be requested by UK

Always do your DD lots of these VPN companies are not trustworthy

 

[clemens]

that's bad news.. don't spend time using them if that's true.

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One of my favorit articles in Mentor Group ~ Sending money anonymously archieve Financial Anonymity

 

[MiddleEuroAsia]

mezoon said:
Fixedfloat is a UK company and has exchanged information with police.

Changenow also exchanges information with police very well known same as fixedfloat. Use your own wallet Monero GUI nothing else if you want security
Click to expand...

I mean, nothing stops you from using TAILS/TOR and be anonymous, what else would they provide police with if not your IP and The address that you used to exchange coins and in case of XMR, yeah, good luck with that!

 

[Simon4466]

I mean if you read it, it just tells you the same as on their website.

These guidelines do not apply to requests made by government and law enforcement agencies outside Gibraltar. Privatus does not respond to requests from governments or law enforcement agencies outside of Gibraltar, all requests must originate from a government agency with jurisdiction in Gibraltar.

[...]

Information available from Privatus​

Customer records​

Privatus has no need to collect or store personal personally identifiable information relating to our customers and therefor no personally identifiable information is requested, collected or stored when a customer signs up for our service. Each customer is assigned a randomly generated identifier which they use to authenticate themselves to our service.
If a payment method is chosen that requires an external payment processor and that payment processor requires that Privatus store a link to the transaction in our system then that identifier together with the payment processor is stored with the randomly generated user account ID.

Information not available from Privatus​

Connection logs​

Privatus does not store any logs relating to the connections of IVPN users to the VPN network i.e. timestamped records of when a particular user connected and disconnected to any server in the IVPN network. If provided with a timestamp Privatus are therefor not able to determine who was connected to any server at that time.

Activity logs​

Privatus do not store logs relating to the activity of IVPN users when connected to the IVPN service i.e. timestamped records of what Internet servers or websites the IVPN user was connected to. Therefor if provided with a timestamp Privatus are not able to retrieve any Internet activity relating to any time period or user account.
If you have further questions, please contact [email protected].
Click to expand...

So although it allows for requests to be made by Gibraltar government offices, it does not store any useful / identifiable information (as long as you do not pay with a creditcard, but this counts for every VPN company). Therefore, I personally do not see any issues in regard to privacy/anonymity when using IVPN, or at least, nothing more than one would have with another VPN.

 

[atari2001]

perfect-privacy is the way to go with vpn in my opinion. They store nothing!

 

[Simon4466]

atari2001 said:
perfect-privacy is the way to go with vpn in my opinion. They store nothing!
Click to expand...

Well they do store your email address (IVPN does not) and use less privacy protecting payment options (e.g. only Bitcoin which is easy to trace, no Monero payments are accepted). Also their website uses both Google Tag Manager tracking as well as Google Analytics, not a big problem in itself but it is a bit odd that such a privacy-focused company does not use their own Matomo instance to keep track of their analytics.

 

[bizman]

atari2001 said:
perfect-privacy is the way to go with vpn in my opinion. They store nothing!
Click to expand...

you believe them to be better and don't share your information, why ?

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[mezoon]

bizman said:
you believe them to be better and don't share your information, why ?
Click to expand...

Perfect privacy before was involved in scandal where they provided information to authorities when allegedly they stored nothing. Loads of advice on this topic that is really bad and from inexperienced people be careful and do your own DD

 

[clemens]

That why we have this thread to figure out! Proton VPS may be a good alternative together with ProtonMail . I know some say they will share the data, but no evidence so far. If they overall keep the same standard as Swiss is known to, they may not share any info.

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[Simon4466]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/secure-email-provider-protonmail-handed-over-user-data-to-europol
ProtonVPN is the one I trust less than the others, but in regard to regular email it will most likely always be unsecure (due to the protocol itself). It's just that they offer the most privacy-friendly free email option.

 

[RealDude]

VPN on iPhone/iPad/iOS and Android is unsecure!

Apple

A security researcher back in August found a significant flaw in iOS VPN apps, and a second researcher has now demonstrated another major issue.

The first problem was that opening a VPN app should close all existing connections, but didn't. The second is that many Apple apps send private data outside the VPN tunnel, including Health (above) and Wallet ”¦

https://9to5mac.com/2022/10/12/ios-vpn-apps-2/
Android

An ongoing security audit of our app identified that Android leaks certain traffic, which VPN services cannot prevent.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/10/10/android-leaks-connectivity-check-traffic/

Last edited: Oct 13, 2022

 

[Simon4466]

Dont use those devices if you need anonymity 🙂 better to use something like tails or another linux distro on a USB (if you do not want to install it as your main os for example) where absolutely necessary.