Silk Road forums

Discussion => Shipping => Topic started by: pcgamer02 on August 07, 2011, 05:54 am

Title: USPS Tumbler
Post by: pcgamer02 on August 07, 2011, 05:54 am
Right now the only hole in our otherwise wonderful anonymity bubble is your physical home address. Even with a fakename\address it still helps LE narrow down recipients. What I was thinking was, what about a mail tumbling service. The basic premise would be to have vendors send items to this 3rd party that in turn forwards it to the correct address. Only the 3rd party would have your correct address. While this doesn't completely solve the problem it ads a layer of deniability and distance from the seller. Could even use a real name. Some hurdles would be to the need to constantly move and re-name the company unless its a real business. Or possibly just rotate multiple residential addresses on a weekly\monthly basis. Anyway, just a though. Sorry if this has been brought up before, was just an idea that popped into my brain I thought I would share. Comments\Questions\Concerns\Insults appreciated :)
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: anarcho47 on August 07, 2011, 06:22 am
First question - has there been an instance of a buyer actually having legal trouble from buying on SR?  The only thing I have heard of is getting a love letter and an resealed package with the contents missing.

Either way you have someone out there besides the buyer and seller who knows the address.  If you use PGP it's pretty easy to deny anyway - hey, I didn't send that address, someone pranked me out of a damned phone book.  You can find anybody's info on the internet, I hear.

the only reason LE goes after buyers is to rat out sellers.  That can't be done here, so LE would only be interested in buying up packages like crazy to rip off sellers and limit supply (very time consuming and costly), or to intercept/receive packages to gather forensics (i.e. if a seller is stupid enough to leave prints all over everything).  If you are buying from sellers with a reputation for packaging well, your item should get there without hassles.  To me, this is just another person in the transaction, another weak link.

An entirely anonymous shipping network, on the other hand.....

Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: pcgamer02 on August 07, 2011, 06:52 am
First question - has there been an instance of a buyer actually having legal trouble from buying on SR?  The only thing I have heard of is getting a love letter and an resealed package with the contents missing.

Either way you have someone out there besides the buyer and seller who knows the address.  If you use PGP it's pretty easy to deny anyway - hey, I didn't send that address, someone pranked me out of a damned phone book.  You can find anybody's info on the internet, I hear.

the only reason LE goes after buyers is to rat out sellers.  That can't be done here, so LE would only be interested in buying up packages like crazy to rip off sellers and limit supply (very time consuming and costly), or to intercept/receive packages to gather forensics (i.e. if a seller is stupid enough to leave prints all over everything).  If you are buying from sellers with a reputation for packaging well, your item should get there without hassles.  To me, this is just another person in the transaction, another weak link.

An entirely anonymous shipping network, on the other hand.....

Yes, its definitely another point of failure. I am naturally a paranoid person, so this was just a thought that seemed interesting enough to share with everyone. From what little I know, seems like the only way for LE to make any inroads here would be to setup as a legit seller and then after a month or two raid the buyers. If a seller does things right, there is almost no way to get caught. So the target has to be buyers. Scare off enough buyers and you wouldn't need to shut down SR, it would be a ghost town.  And lets be honest, LE just wants a bust to shut senators up and for some good publicity. Once you have some buyers, From there just keep moving up the ladder as best you can. If you have a big enough group, there is always someone who makes a mistake. I wouldn't imagine it would be hard to trace a seller just by e-mail. E-mail>IP>ISP>Home address. Boom! From what I understand tor and pgp isnt really feasible to crack so LE need focus people. The only thing I am unsure about is if LE is allowed to sell narcotics to people. I would hope mot, seems like a conflict of interest.  There is also the fact that"Kid overdoses on heroin purchased from police" is a much worse than "Random dude buys small amount of weed online". Hopefully fear of bad press is enough to prevent LE from selling. You never know though...
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: akrobatik on August 08, 2011, 02:52 am
totally, it be impossible to assure that your package is gonna get passed on..

i could picture a tumbler with 2 kilos of coke, k and e and some fine herbs - and you'd never hear from mr tumbler again... hed be pretty dam rich though!
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: envious on August 08, 2011, 03:07 am
Putting trust in third parties always ends in failure at some point.
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: 0xbeef- on August 08, 2011, 03:19 am
What you do is something like this:

1) Incorporate or buy a couple shelf company in your favorite tax haven... Sychelles, or wherever.   (~$1000)

2) Incorporate a couple subsidiaries of those companies, in your own country (depending on your laws) using these offshore companies
     - In this way, no one knows and/or can get access to who exactly owns these local companies, except that they are owned by some company,     
        somewhere else that isn't your county.

3) Open a couple accounts with some corporate re-mailing services, that will accept mail on behalf of company 1, and forward it to company 2's re-mailing service  (monthly fee + deposits for postage to do the forwarding)

4) Open a mailbox somewhere, under your own name, which will receive mail from the second company... As it's re-mailing service will forward to this third box  (another monthly fee)

5) Once you get mail to your mailbox, close it... open a new one somewhere else, have you mail from company 2 forwarded to the new box.

But really, that is very expensive... And if you're going to get crazy like that; it'd be because you're into some pretty serious shit I would think... better to find a local "retailer" and deal on that kind of stuff in person, rather than through the mail ;)

Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: rake on August 08, 2011, 04:11 am
How about a snail mail tor system.  You place the final destination envelope inside 6 other envelopes. and you only get your shit after it has been delivered 6 times.  :P
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: Kind Bud on August 08, 2011, 10:23 pm
There are several remailing services that are not associated with Silk Road.

Personally, I trust a vendor with 300+ deliveries, with 100% record, and who does not save any customer information a lot more than I would any 3rd party.
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: joeblow2 on August 08, 2011, 10:45 pm
How about a snail mail tor system.  You place the final destination envelope inside 6 other envelopes. and you only get your shit after it has been delivered 6 times.  :P

That is moved across country in a backpack on the shell of a large land Tortoise...like the kind you used to get to ride in petting zoos.  :D

See how that works...snail mail tor system...on a land TORtoise...hehehe  ;)  ummm....nevermind....
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: pcgamer02 on August 09, 2011, 12:43 am
Looks like I was way off. The answer is clearly carrier pigeons :)
Title: Re: USPS Tumbler
Post by: bp on August 09, 2011, 06:38 pm
What you do is something like this:

1) Incorporate or buy a couple shelf company in your favorite tax haven... Sychelles, or wherever.   (~$1000)

2) Incorporate a couple subsidiaries of those companies, in your own country (depending on your laws) using these offshore companies
     - In this way, no one knows and/or can get access to who exactly owns these local companies, except that they are owned by some company,     
        somewhere else that isn't your county.

3) Open a couple accounts with some corporate re-mailing services, that will accept mail on behalf of company 1, and forward it to company 2's re-mailing service  (monthly fee + deposits for postage to do the forwarding)

4) Open a mailbox somewhere, under your own name, which will receive mail from the second company... As it's re-mailing service will forward to this third box  (another monthly fee)

5) Once you get mail to your mailbox, close it... open a new one somewhere else, have you mail from company 2 forwarded to the new box.

But really, that is very expensive... And if you're going to get crazy like that; it'd be because you're into some pretty serious shit I would think... better to find a local "retailer" and deal on that kind of stuff in person, rather than through the mail ;)

I think that is exactly what the rolling websites on the clearnet do.
I've rolled the dice and bought from them (no opiates though :( ), with my CC no less, and sometimes it's from a (my country)  addy and one larger order came through customs from overseas. Scary but it's worked here too.

The worst part is they get your phone number and start telemarketing you. That's fine if your sig other is OK with what your doing, not so much when not.
Assholes!