How to achieve good anonymity with Monero? My current layman conclusion from other people suggestions (lemmings.world)

submitted 2 months ago by hetzlemmingsworld@lemmings.world to c/monero@monero.town

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cross-posted from: https://lemmings.world/post/12787893

SEPARATE MONERO ACCOUNTS - For privacy reason, organize own funds into accounts like “cash”, “work”, “trading”, “mining”, “donations”, etc.. And in order to later combine these individual accounts funds, sweep/withdraw each of the account balance the way, that you do NOT sweep/withdraw multiple accounts balances in a single transaction, but one transaction per account. Feather wallet may do this thanks to its "Coin control" functions? Source: https://getmonero.dev/public-address/subaddress.html ; https://docs.featherwallet.org/guides/features
WAIT/AGE XMR AFTER RECEIVING IT - After receiving Monero (XMR) from a 3rd party, wait some time (a few hours to a few days)
CHURN/MIX XMR BY SENDING IT TO OTHER OWN ACCOUNT - Churning/mixing means to send your Monero/XMR to a different account/wallet in order to make it harder for others to track you: "So after 1 churn, there is a 1 in 16 chance (6.25%) that this transaction is yours. After 2 churns, it is a 1 in 16x16 = 1/256 = 0.39% chance that the final output of the route is yours. After 3 churns, 1 in 16x16x16 = 1/4096 = 0.0244%".

A) Send your entire (or part of) your account's balance to a different account/wallet of yours, such secret destination account won't be used for receiving 3rd party XMR (only yours).

B) Send your entire account's balance to same account (its own address - self). In case you would send partial, you would mix churned outputs with non-churned making your anonymization effort more or less pointless.
WAIT/AGE CHURNED/MIXED XMR AGAIN
CHURN/MIX AGAIN BY SENDING TO SELF OR 3RD PARTY - In order to decrease chance (from above mentioned 6.25% to 0.39%) of output being attributed to you. When having various Monero accounts for various purposes (e.g. "work", "home"), possibly churn 2x before "merging" XMR from multiple accounts of yours, example: KYC'ed 3rd party -> MyWork -> MyWork2nd ......... 3rd party -> MyHome -> MyHome2nd -> MyHome3rd -> MyWork2nd

FAQ: Why it is not pointless to send Monero from/to self, meaning same account? Because sending to same account is effective in decreasing the chance of a transaction being traced (attributed to you), since "there is no way to see the address" and other person says "You can send to yourself as many times as you want, without anyone knowing you're actually doing it. Every such transaction (called "churn") puts you in a bigger crowd of possible senders." and another person claims similar "churn to your own wallet, as it is not possible to link the output to the wallet".

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[-] k4r4b3y@monero.town 8 points 2 months ago

Full membership proofs will solve the issues, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. It can't arrive soon enough (provided that the maths and the code implementation are sound and secure, of course).

[-] hetzlemmingsworld@lemmings.world 1 points 2 months ago

Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMP), as a concept, is a replacement for rings within the Monero protocol. ... This means every input goes from an immediate anonymity set of 16 to 100,000,000.

https://ccs.getmonero.org/proposals/fcmp++-development.html shows "Completed 0 of 7 milestones" at my end.

[-] k4r4b3y@monero.town 2 points 2 months ago

Do you follow the -dev and no-wallet-left-behind irc/matrix room discussions? Kayabanerve posts some good updates on the work being done. Last time I checked was that they were getting math proofs for the FCMP.

[-] monerodice_pro@monero.town 3 points 2 months ago

Add_5: If you want to churn Monero with a 3rd party, you can use https://monerodice.pro with multiplier set to 1, so it is guaranteed to send you back the same amount, but using different outputs. Network fees are covered by the application.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 2 months ago

Just using monero by itself gives you good anonymity. What is your threat model?

[-] azalty@jlai.lu 2 points 2 months ago

Yes and no

Not that much against government but for everything else, it’s pretty good indeed

You nailed it, it’s all about the threat model

[-] nihilist@monero.town 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

thing is, OPSEC is not about giving some random advice without explaining why in the first place. every technical complication must be justified, to be taken seriously

[-] LobYonder@monero.town 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Be aware of the EABE pattern/attack which can leak information: https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/12479/solutions-to-the-monero-eabe-attack . Avoid repeatedly sending exchange-received funds directly to a regular business without churning and changing your identity for the business