What is bitcoin fog

Bitcoin Fog

Enjoyed the article? Share:

Bitcoin Fog acts as a mixing service or an online wallet. Funds transferred to the Fog get mixed with other users’ funds. When requested, funds are paid out in multiple randomized transactions to further anonymize the source of money. Comission as of August 4th 2012 is chosen randomly between 1-3% on all deposits. [1]

Contents

Description [ edit ]

The bitcoin network might be anonymous in terms of single-handedly revealing your ip address, but the transaction history is recorded in the block chain and is publically available, which makes your anonymity very vulnerable. Once the interested parties, be it authorities or just interested researchers have acquired any one of your addresses or transactions, they could easily track your money around the network.

And knowing your transaction history, connecting your bitcoin addresses to real you is possible, because you will at some point need to exchange your bitcoins to or from a fiat currency using a bank account number, a credit card, LR account or similar service which is much less anonymous than the bitcoin network.

We are providing a solution for this: using our service you mix up your bitcoins in our own pool with other users’ bitcoins, and get paid back to other addresses from our mixed pool, which, if properly done by you can eliminate any chance of finding your payments and making it impossible to prove any connection between a deposit and a withdraw inside our service.

In December 2013 the site was used to launder a part of the 96,000 BTC from the robbery of Sheep Marketplace.

In February 2015, a total of 7,170 bitcoin was stolen from the Chinese exchange Bter.com and traced back to cryptocurrency-tumblers like Bitcoin Fog. [3]

How it works [ edit ]

Standard procedure to anonymize bitcoins is to recharge your account on the payment page (Deposit) and their subsequent withdrawal after a while on the page of Withdrawal (Withdrawal). Bitcoins will be mixed in our internal pool with other users bitcoins and then paid to your address (or multiple addresses), in multiple transactions for a random amount.

You register an account on website and deposit bitcoins to the designated address. After a couple of network confirmations, money is registered on Fog account, and you can schedule withdrawals. Each withdrawal will be split in a random number of payouts, depending on the amount, and the relative size of each payout will be randomized as well. Even the timing of those payouts will be randomly spread out over a period of time user will specify.

Ideally user should deposit an amount of bitcoins to the Fog, wait some time (for amounts above 100BTC we recommend a day, above 300 BTC a couple of days, about a week for 1000BTC, etc.) and request a withdrawal, which will not have the same amount as the original deposit, leaving some funds in the Fog.

Then customer should deposit another batch of bitcoins and withdraw yet another amount, again different from the amount you have deposited. This time it can be lower than deposited, or higher, adding the funds you have left from the previous deposit. This way there is no practically reliable way to do statistical analysis on the block chain and link your deposits to your withdrawals.

The service is paid by charging a Commission of 1% to 3%, randomly charged for each payment. All coins collected go into a common pool to ensure the continued operation of the service.

Источник

Accessing Bitcoin Fog

You will need Tor. Tor is an open-source anonymization network.

A short overview of Tor Project.

When you are done setting up tor, simply go to this address: http://foggedd3mc4dr2o2.onion

You can also track all the latest Bitcoin Fog news and warnings about hypothetical downtime or disturbances of the service operation on our twitter: twitter.com/BitcoinFog

The website you are currently browsing is just an information page about how to access the real thing. Bitcoin fog is not hosted on the same server and can only be accessed through Tor. The clearnet gateway does not have any sensitive information, and hacking or seizing it will yield nothing except perhaps it’s service termination. All the sensitive data is kept in the hidden service, which will be operational no matter what happens to the gateway.

What is Bitcoin Fog?

The bitcoin network might be anonymous in terms of single-handedly revealing your ip address, but the transaction history is recorded in the block chain and is publically available, which makes your anonymity very vulnerable. Once the interested parties, be it authorities or just interested researchers (http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html) have acquired any one of your addresses or transactions, they could easily track your money around the network.

And knowing your transaction history, connecting your bitcoin addresses to real you is possible, because you will at some point need to exchange your bitcoins to or from a fiat currency using a bank account number, a credit card, LR account or similar service which is much less anonymous than the bitcoin network.

We are providing a solution for this: using our service you mix up your bitcoins in our own pool with other users’ bitcoins, and get paid back to other addresses from our mixed pool, which, if properly done by you can eliminate any chance of finding your payments and making it impossible to prove any connection between a deposit and a withdraw inside our service.

How the service works

You register an account on our website and deposit bitcoins to the designated address. After a couple of network confirmations, your money is registered on your Fog account, and you can schedule withdrawals. Each withdrawal will be split in a random number of payouts, depending on the amount, and the relative size of each payout will be randomized as well. Even the timing of those payouts will be randomly spread out over a period of time you will specify.

Ideally you should deposit an amount of bitcoins to the Fog, wait some time (for amounts above 100BTC we recommend a day, above 300 BTC a couple of days, about a week for 1000BTC, etc.) and request a withdrawal, which will not have the same amount as the original deposit, leaving some funds in the Fog.

Then you should deposit another batch of bitcoins and withdraw yet another amount, again different from the amount you have deposited. This time it can be lower than deposited, or higher, adding the funds you have left from the previous deposit. This way there is no practically reliable way to do statistical analysis on the block chain and link your deposits to your withdrawals.

“Do I get same bitcoins back or other bitcoins?”

You should understand that in bitcoin there is no “your” or “mine” bitcoins, nor are there “same” bitcoins. They are all just numbers. Whatever transaction you will get back from us will be just a number of bitcoins transferred to your address, not “marked” in any way.

A link could be made if you would get paid from the same address that you have deposited bitcoins to. This is not the case with Bitcoin Fog. The money you deposit actually stay on the random initial address we generate for you. Only when our main account is running low, do we transfer the money from your deposit address to the main pool. That way, you may get a payout from the pool, while your original money is still sitting on the random initial account, not linked to your payout anywhere in the block chain. Since it is just a bitcoin address like any other, there is no way to even see that you have deposited money to Bitcoin Fog, and not to a random account you have generated yourself. (Until the pool runs low and transfers your original money.)

Even if you waited long enough time for your money to be transferred to the pool, there is still no reliable way to see that it was your original transfer that is the source of your payout, since it is mixed with other users’ transfers.

Another thing to consider is the amount of your withdrawal. If you transfer 1.382 to us, and the next day you withdraw

1.38 bitcoins to another account, those amounts will be visible in the block chain, and unless there were 10 other people that day that also withdrew just 1.38 bitcoins, the link between your deposit and your withdrawal will be pretty obvious. You will still have plausible deniability, since nobody else has access to our servers and can actually prove that those bitcoins came from your account, but the link will be found nevertheless.

This is why you should ideally never withdraw the same amount as you have deposited. We are already helping you to do this by transferring your money to you in multiple randomized payouts at randomized times (and optionally to different addresses), but to be sure you should withdraw to multiple addresses and different amounts than the one you have deposited. Also make sure to change your deposit address every now and then to further anonymize your payments.

Why us?

There have been a couple of similar services before, and as we see it, the problem with most of them was that they were not professional enough, not secure enough, and not taken seriously, thus becoming subjects to easy hacking and other problems. (mybitcoin, blindbitoin, etc.) We on the other hand, are here for the long run. Our team consists of professional secure web application developers with 5-10 years experience, and we have built this solution from scratch with security being our number one concern. We strive to be a mixing service that just works and does not loose it’s private bitcoin keys due to poorly configured backups or because of someone hacker attacks on another sites from the same shared hosting, or because of any other silly reason.

The service is run on a dedicated server manually configured for this very purpose, which does publically connected from the internet (not needed if using Tor). Bitcoin daemon is run on another machine, and all suspicious activity is monitored and the website shuts down automatically if it even senses it is under attack. It is manually monitored and checked on a daily basis.

For security purposes, the service operates through the Tor network only. You can be sure your data is processed securely and only by our server if you use our .onion address. On the other hand, this also makes us feel more secure, knowing that we will never be found and dealt with by proper authorities. (Even if Tor network would be compromised, we have taken all the necessary precautions to still stay hidden.) This is better for you as well; while a clearnet service may swear on not cooperating with authorities in case they show up at their homes, we can say with high certainty that not only will we not cooperate with any authorities, the authorities will not actually be able to show up at our doorstep, because finding a tor doorstep has proven difficult.

Are you going to run away with my money?

With a service like ours it will always be an issue of trust of course, but we can ensure you that the service will continue to operate, simply because of all the time and effort we put into building it, debugging it, setting it up at a secure location, etc., which makes it simply not worth for us to run away with a couple of hundred bitcoins which is collected at the initial phase. As the time will pass, you will see that our service will undergo changes and improvements, which someone who wanted to hit-and-run also would not do.

And once again, running through Tor makes it not likely for us to be shut down under pressure from the authorities. When in doubt about this, consider Silk Road.

Of course, we are still going to have to earn your trust. We suggest you trying the service out with small amounts, and increasing slowly as time goes.

Do you keep logs?

We keep logs for 1 week for debugging and troubleshooting purposes. After that they are automatically deleted. ALL logs are taken care of. Even the bitcoin client we use is purged every week, starting with a fresh installation of only the block chain, and importing all the addresses we need at that point automatically. That way, if you have received a payment from us a month ago, not even the address will be left on our server. If any service tells you that they don’t keep any logs at all, they are most probably lying, becauase when clients come asking for funds they think are missing, not having any history is like turning our backs on them and not being able to provide any support.

Fees and requirements:

The service takes 1%-3% (randomized for obscurity) fee on each deposit. No other fees are in place, no complex calculations based on the number of withdraws or similar.

Minimum withdraw amount is 0.035 BTC.

We do wait for 6 network confirmations on all deposits to prevent double-spending.

Источник

BITCOIN FOG MIXING SERVICE

Traditional and reliable mixing service for Bitcoin cryptocurrency

How to Access Bitcoin Fog Mixing Service?

1. You can access to Bitcoin Fog only through Tor network. So, before clean your bitcoins, you have to download Tor Browser on your PC:
   Tor Project Download Page
2. After installation, launch Tor Browser and go to onion address of Bitcoin Fog:
   http://foggedddxlunnaaa.onion
3. All the news and important information can be found in our twitter:
   http://twitter.com/bitcoinfog

Bitcoin Fog Address

Always make sure that you open needed address in your browser. There are a lot of phishing copies around the web, because of the popularity of our bitcoin mixer.

Bitcoin Fog team owns just 3 addresses:

What is Bitcoin Fog?

Bitcoin Fog is internet service in anonymous network darknet. A team of independent and enthusiastic developers created this resource in 2011, thus becoming the first and the most popular bitcoin anonymizer. The main aim was to improve all weaknesses of bitcoin payment system. Now all transactions inside the system can be viewed. The chain of blocks is opened for public access, which means that concerned parties have access to the information about money transfer and balance on bitcoin addresses. There is an opportunity to reveal your identity during exchanging cryptocurrency into fiat currency, if you know bitcoin-addresses.

Bitcoin Fog breaks this chain. Few methods are used for mixing of bitcoins. The first is that incoming deposit is divided into smaller parts. All this parts are mixed with parts of other users in common pool. The process of tumbling is automatic and it takes from 40 to 120 minutes, depending on available reserve. After this procedure, cleaned bitcoins are ready for the withdrawal on your other bitcoin-address. There is no connection between sent and received cryptocurrency.

How Bitcoin Fog works

As usual, the first step is site registration. Then you need to deposit coins to the stated address, and wait for few network confirmations. When it’s done, your money is on your account. Now you can time your withdrawals.

So you deposit few bitcoins to the Fog and wait some time (for amounts above 20BTC we recommend a day, above 50 BTC a couple of days, about a week for 200BTC, etc.). Afterwards, you should make a withdrawal, which is less than original amount, that you deposited before.

Next time you will deposit another part of bitcoins and withdraw again different amount from that you deposited. Now it can be less or more, adding the coins that are left from the first time. Thus, there is no way to analyze or correlate your deposits with your withdrawals on the block chain.

Do I get same bitcoins back or other bitcoins?

First of all, you should realize that there is no “your” or “mine” bitcoins, nor are there “same” bitcoins. It is just numbers. Your coins are not “marked” in any way. The transaction you will receive from us will be just a number of coins transferred to stated address.

A link could be done just if you receive bitcoin from the address that you deposited bitcoins to. It is not about Bitcoin Fog. The coins you deposited will stay on the random address which we generated for you. Just when our main account is running low, we transfer the money from your deposit address to the main pool. In that way, you will get coins from the pool, thought your original money is still on the random deposited address, which is not connected to your payout. So there is no way to see where you have sent money to Bitcoin Fog or to random address, because bitcoin address is like any other.

Even if you waited enough for your money reached the pool, there is still no way to see that it was your original coins, since it was mixed with coins of other users.

Another story is the amount of your withdrawal. If you transfer 1.685 to us, and next day you withdraw almost same amount of bitcoins, those amounts will be visible in the block chain. Even if there were 15 people, who made same withdrawal that day, the link between your deposit and withdrawal will be obvious. Even though nobody else has access to our service and can prove that those bitcoins are yours, the link will be found anyway.

That’s why you should never deposit and withdraw the same amount. Divide your coins into different parts and only then send. Every time when you need to clean your coins, use new deposit address.

Why us ?

As we see, there was a lot similar services, but they all had many problems. Some had low security level or were not professional enough, therefore they had been easy to hack. Our service is the case for a long time. We have professional secure web application developers, who has 10-15 year long experience, because security is very important for our service. We aspire to be a mixing service that works without any silly problems, such as losing its private bitcoin keys due to poorly configured backups or hacker attacks.

Our service is run on a dedicated server, which we configured manually for this purpose. It is publically connected from the internet (not needed if using Tor). Bitcoin daemon is run on the other machine, where the website shuts down automatically if it senses any suspicious activity or the site is under attack. It is manually monitored and checked every day.

Because of security, the service operates only through Tor network. If you use out .onion address, you can be sure that your data is processed securely and only by our server. On the other side, we know that we will never be found by competent authority and this also makes us feel more secure. (Even if Tor network would be compromised, we have taken all the necessary precautions to still stay hidden.) This is better for you too. Even though Clearnet services may assure you they’re not cooperating with authorities, they are easily to find. We might as well say that we not only not cooperate with the authorities, but it will be very hard for them find us.

Is it safe to send bitcoins to anonymous service?

There always will be a problem of trust to our service, but we can assure you that the service will continue to work. A dozen of bitcoins is not worth all the work that had been done, time that had been taken and effort we put into building it and debugging it. When the time will pass, you’ll see that our service will bear changes and improvements, which someone who wanted to hit-and-run also would not do.

And again, we will not shut down our service because of the pressure of the authorities. And we still have to earn your trust. But we suggest you trying small amount to be sure in our honesty and then if you like, increase payments.

Do you keep logs?

We keep logs for 1 week for debugging and troubleshooting. After this time, they are automatically deleted. We are taking care of ALL logs. Even if bitcoin client we use is cleared every week, beginning with a fresh installation of only the block chain, and importing all the addresses we need at that point automatically. So if you’ve received bitcoins from us a month ago, even the address will not be on our server so far. If any service tells you that they don’t keep logs, they are most likely lying, because they will not be able to provide any support for the client who missed money, as they don’t have any history.

Fees and requirements:

The service takes from 1% to 3% (randomized for obscurity) fee on each deposit There are no other fees, no complex calculations based on the number of withdraws or similar.

Minimum withdraw amount is 0.001 BTC.

We do wait for 3 network confirmations on all deposits to prevent double-spending.

Источник