Saki

You’re right. Use a centralized exchange (CEX), and you’ll be KYCed and de-anonymized. That’s why most privacy-coin users prefer DEX. For normal persons, if privacy is important, using anonymous gift cards or prepaid credit cards, which you can easily buy without ID, is more practical, much better than KYC'ed crypto.

If you can somehow get KYC-free coin, maybe from DEX, i.e. if you can get it personally from your friend or peer without showing ID etc., then and only then, you have real private crypto. There are two popular ways for this (Bisq and LocalMonero). Another option called Haveno is hopefully usable soon, but that is still iffy.

Using DEX is not essentially difficult, much safer than you might imagine due to a mechanism called multisig, but maybe this option is not for normal people. When you feel experimental, you might want to try to buy a small amount via DEX, to see what it’s like. If you’re a popular programmer or artist, accepting donations in crypto is also an easy way to get no-KYC coin. Another option is p2pooling—you can get a few Euro worth of XMR relatively easily; yet this last option is time-consuming and not very effective. Many of p2pool users or full-node people are privacy-advocating volunteers, maintaining/participating the Monero network for philosophical reasons, fully aware it’s not profitable in terms of money. This might be part of the reason why Monero tx fees are almost zero (like 1/100 of that of BTC). At the same time, there are many sketchy people around crypto too 😟 Be careful and stay safe!

It depends on how much you have, etc. If it’s just like 10 or 100 €, maybe you don’t need to be super careful.

The following is just one possible way—get a safe and libre “poor man’s hardware wallet” quickly and easily without paying:

1. Main wallet

• Get a USB stick, install Tails. This takes about an hour (most time is for downloading the .img file)
• Create a persistent storage, with a strong password (maybe 7 or 8 random words).
• Install Feather. This takes 10–15 minutes; 30 minutes if generating a new wallet. Use it as your main wallet, and send your Monero to it.
• When ready, shut down Tails. Pull out the USB and save it in a safe place. Now your wallet is physically disconnected from the Internet, air gapped. Very hard for any attacker to hack it.

2. Hot wallet

• Set up whatever wallet(s) you like on your daily device(s) for daily use. It too can be Feather, or it can be something different. Just don’t have too much money in a daily wallet.

3. When you send Monero from 1 to 2

• Insert the said USB, boot into Tails, send a necessary (small) amount from 1 to 2. Unlike BTC, the tx fees are like 1 cent or less. You can make a lot of small TXs without worrying about fees.
• Once you signed and sent, immediately close your main Feather, shut down Tails, and physically disconnect the USB again. You don’t need to wait for confirmations. It’ll be fully confirmed in 15 or 30 minutes, and for which your wallet doesn’t need to be online.
• So your daily wallet will be moderately funded, ready to use. You can enjoy private transactions, e.g. buying VPS or making anonymous donations to support your favorite software. Even if your daily wallet is hacked, your main wallet will be safe, physically disconnected from the Internet.

In theory this should work pretty well, if not the strongest possible. It’s not a recommendation, though. Do your own research. You may want to ask the same question in !monero@monero.town; hearing various opinions, not just trusting one person (me), is a good idea.

If you’re familiar with Electrum and migrating to the privacy coin, Feather may be a convenient choice.

The fundamental problem for you might not be the wallet; but KYC vs. non-KYC. Is it allowed to post a link or mention specific platforms here? You may want to check a website about no-kyc and try a trusted, no-kyc platform—not a CEX but a DEX (pure P2P), so no company can monitor your private life (related to shopping). You can browse monero.town, which is a friendly Lemmy instance of !privacyguides@lemmy.one in the sense that Monero is recomended on the official site of Privacy Gudies: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/cryptocurrency/ (I’m a mod from !privacy@monero.town)

The tricky part is, if you have been once KYCed, your privacy invaded, then you couldn’t undo it (un-KYC it). You may need to start over, creating totally new addresses, doing everything anonymously over Tor. If you’re not that privacy-oriented, you can just swap the KYC coin you have to Monero, and you’ll be invisible from that point.

But Moneo is not magic to solve everything. DYOR and stay safe!

about time 😊 that’s not the goal; one of the first basic steps!

EDIT Sorry I should not have said it like this. Even though that was my honest feelings, said as free speech without any meany connotations, this should have been treated as good news, like someone finally ditched Windows.

One of the next steps might be to figure out how not to load GA.js GTM.js Google Fonts etc.

There is a long way to go to de-Google oneself, and unfortunately it’s not easy nor trivial. One subtle example: Google is a broker of Tor Snowflake, which could cause a difficult dilemma.

See also:

Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records

• https://lemmy.world/post/8536384
• https://sh.itjust.works/post/9605238
• https://monero.town/post/1165443 etc.

The French National Police is unlawfully using an Israeli facial recognition software [installed massively and secretly. The Minister ordered an investigation]

• https://monero.town/post/1200440

Some of possible solutions include:

• always use Tor 24/7, Tails or not, when possible, even when browsing normal websites, or using IRC etc.
• use bridges

This Lemmy instance is relatively new, so everyone here is relatively new 😃

Monero (XMR) has some interesting, experimental features—among other thing it has the “privacy first” design, having a lot of valid use cases. Monero might be what Bitcoin originally tried to achieve. Yet it’s not magic to solve everything. We’re not “religious believers” who blindly insist Monero is perfect. The privacy coin does have several potential problems too.

Many of us are critical thinkers, questioning the recent tendencies toward excessive surveillance society, or negative problems caused by monopoly by Big Tech, and so on. I hope you’re interested in some of these privacy points. Many or us are not traders nor investors—more like privacy advocates, a kind of philosophers, or cypher punks. I hope you find some of those topics interesting, important, informative, or otherwise thought-provoking.

That CF may block Tor indiscriminately is a well-known fact acknowledged by CF itself. Calling that “paranoia” only shows they’re not familiar with online privacy. They say, “Those fussy about suspected CF proxy logs can use VPN/Tor when accessing the site.” No one here is talking about “suspected CF proxy logs”. When Tor is blocked, “use Tor!” couldn’t be a solution.

Maybe the person was not a fool, just not too good at English, can’t fully understand what they read. Some of their first posts were ambiguous & confusing too. Nevertheless, they don’t seem to be a good salesperson, being rude to potential customers, not having some basic knowledge about online privacy.

Their worst move was, the childish assumption that we might be willing to cooperate with them if they paid a small rebate to us in XMR (they might be imagining that we love XMR so much we’d do anything if they pay XMR). Unfortunately for them, many users here are critical thinkers… What they should have tried is, explaining how their service was different (if it is different), why one may want to use it. The title “A great opportunity to earn Monero has landed!” is, frankly, pathetic.

What exactly does one need to do for “activation”? A phone number and/or GeoIP are involved?

This item in you FAQ page is also cool :)

The product I want to buy is not listed, can you help?

Yes, please contact us to create a special order. We can buy any digital & physical products for crypto.

I truly hope this will become a popular and convenient element for the Monero community and your business will be fruitful. You may want to consider talking to Kycnot.me; if recognized and listed there, that may mean a lot. Thanks for joining monero.town and sharing this interesting news. It’s still iffy, but it does sound great if it works 😊

On the other hand, your blog article, How to Buy a Domain 100% Anonymously?, suggests that you may not be very familiar with these privacy topics. The most obvious and easiest options (Njalla, Incognet) are not mentioned—both directly accept Monero. Also, your knowledge may not be up-to-date, unaware of the ramifications of “Thick Whois”, esp. NIS2, Article 28.

If this works, that’s very interesting and potentially very useful.

1. International Prepaid Card: Supported Countries even include China, Turkey, Turkmenistan. Feels rather unlikely. Is this actually tested well? Or you just listed countries where in theory this might work?
2. What if that 3-D Secure thing is required?
3. To test this for a small amount like $5: “Total fees: $5.14 ($5.00 + 2.50%)” means I’d pay $10.14, i.e. fees are 102.8%, higher than the card value itself?

That’s a good point. One of the two biggest weak points of a so-called e2e provider/platform is, the e2e provider itself.

The only true e2e is e.g. Alice does gpg -ea on an offline computer, copy-pastes ascii and sends it to Bob via an online computer, who copy-pastes this ascii to his offline computer and does gpg -d there. Their seckeys are airgapped from the communication channel. Sharing your sec with a provider is especially ridiculous (e.g. Proton). At least that’s what I think.

@ride I know the background: this info could be very useful, and you commented, “Even if not directly Monero-related, this draws attention to the community when such contributions come from here.”

The problem is, !privacyguides@lemmy.one has a different set of rules than Monero.town does, explicitly stating:

This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.

Hence, as you can see in https://monero.town/post/1085883 (you double-posted the same thing, too), a negative comment about this:

I feel like this might count as self-promotion, given it’s mentioning a particular website, their GitHub, their running service, etc. Regardless, it is informative

@LWD@lemm.ee is not “childish”, even stating “it is informative.” But even if this post may be useful, we should follow the rules of !privacyguides@lemmy.one when (cross-)posting here; otherwise, Monero.town may look bad.