Hi orngecapsule,Apologies for the delay.Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 amall the other guides use mtgox, which freezes your account if you're using TOR, which is lame. i choose blockchain.info instead because it's very popular here, and after weeks of intense research my conclusion: blockchain is the best online wallet for my needs. why? tor accessible, cool interface, flexible send options, highest security, etc.It should be noted that Mt.Gox only freezes your account when you access it via TOR, but funds will be released once you verify your identity with them; it is possible to gain access to your funds in Mt.Gox, but you have to give up your anonymity to do so. If this happens, verify your identity, retrieve your Bitcoin, then tumble the fuck out of them in order to remove any links to the Bitcoin you bought on Mt.Gox and the Bitcoin you send to SR. There is nothing illegal about buying Bitcoin, but it is illegal to use them or any method of payment to buy illegal drugs.blockchain.info, like all online wallets, can not be trusted 100%. There is no guarantee that they won't run off with your Bitcoin at any time. The safest place for your Bitcoin is in your Bitcoin client on your own computer, encrypted and backed up regularly. There are guides on how to do this on the Bitcoin wiki:https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_walletQuote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 am1) Go to www.instawallet.org and it will give you your own personal secret site with your own unique bitcoin address. make sure to bookmark this instawallet page because if you lose this link, you lose anything in it.- Note: Make sure it's instawallet.ORG, with .org in the end.- instawallet is a temporary piggy bank. each time you refresh the site you receive a unique randomized bitcoin address and a new secret link.- we are using instawallet to move our bitcoins around, obscuring and fogging up the footprints. that is laundering or "washing" bitcoins.[snip]3) Now open up a another Instawallet page, which will give you another unique bitcoin address. This is your second Instawallet address. (bookmark also)4) Send your bitcoins from your first Instawallet page to your second Instawallet address.As E-Wallets use an internal transfer process, they do 'tumble' or 'launder' your Bitcoin in a sense, but it would not be prudent to rely on E-Wallets alone for tumbling purposes. Read more about anonymity and staying anonymous here:https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/AnonymityQuote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 amIf you're truly of the deranged, extremely super paranoid kind you can ALSO use a site called bitcoin fog. It's a free service that takes your coins and tumbles them to death, completely washing or BLEACHING them for a few hours. once it's done your coins are IMMACULATELY CLEAN.you can do that instead of the instawallet steps or in addition to them. depends on your level of paranoia.It is advisable to tumble all Bitcoin that you don't want traced back to you. Not necessary, but advisable.BitcoinFog is not a free service: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 1.00 BTC.The method to use BitcoinFog securely is below, taken directly from their clearnet website (www.bitcoinfog.com):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 (which will depend on how many users are using the service, right now in the starting phase we recommend a week) 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.Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 amBonus useful tips:1) When entering bitcoin addresses ALWAYS COPY PASTE them instead of manually typing in that long ass address. Always triple check you have the right bitcoin address as your destination. Imagine sending 100 BTC to a bitcoin address that has 1 wrong digit or letter.. you're fucked.Whilst it seems better to copy and paste your Bitcoin address, there have been cases in the past whereby the person was sending Bitcoin to a certain address by copying and pasting the address into the necessary fields, but due to their computer being compromised, they pasted a different Bitcoin address. What this exploit did was change the address on the clipboard once it had been copied, and when the user pasted the Bitcoin address into their client or E-Wallet, they were actually pasting the attacker's address. As you said, you should triple check you have the right address, but verify it visually with first, middle and last 4 digits before hitting the send button.bitcoin-qt, the computer based client, doesn't allow you to send to an address shorter than 34 characters - I'm unsure if E-Wallets do the same, but I would assume so as transfers can't be sent to an address shorter than 34 characters, unless you input 4 or 5 characters of a first-bit address.It would also be prudent after hitting "Get a new address" in both your Bitcoin client and your SR account to check that address on blockexplorer.com or blockchain.info to ensure it has never been used on the network before. Though it is a statistical improbability, that very thing actually happened to me when I set up a new receiving address in my client. For some reason I checked the address before I bought my Bitcoin and noticed that it had been used 2 years ago - before I'd even heard of Bitcoin.Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 am2) Never store bitcoins for long periods of time (for example more than 1 week) in TEMPORARY bitcoin address wallets such as Easywallet or Instawallet. These temportary wallets are mostly useful for moving funds around. If you want to store your bitcoins somewhere for a long period of time use your Blockchain.info wallet or just keep all your bitcoins in your SR account. They will not disappear ever from there.Blockchain.info is just another temporary E-Wallet service. SR is also another temporary E-Wallet service, and we are trusting that the site administrators won't just abscond with our Bitcoin. Never assume that the system is safe - if you want to store your Bitcoin somewhere for a long period of time NEVER use ANY E-Wallet. ALWAYS use your computer based client or a brainwallet.Read about brainwallets here:https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallethttp://bitcoinmagazine.net/brain-wallets-the-what-and-the-how/Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 am3) Instead of saving all your login / password or bitcoin addresses, etc or all other SR related info in some notepad or text document on your harddrive, register for a TORMAIL account and keep all your links, passwords, and sensitive information in your Drafts section there.Do not store ANY sensitive information in a Tormail account. All Tormail emails and draft emails are stored in plain-text on their servers, and you are placing your trust in a third party not to reveal your information the way hushmail.com did. Tormail have records of your username and password - all they are missing is your IP address. When sending mail with Tormail ALWAYS ensure that sensitive information is encrypted. Again, just as with SR, do NOT trust the system.The best place to store your information is in your head. If you can't do that, store them in a double or triple encrypted file on a memory stick or SD card. I won't go into encryption here but search the forums and you'll find all the information you need to run a secure setup.Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 am4) Don't use empty houses or drop locations to receive packages. That kind of shit raises suspicions. Insist that the vendors use professionally printed properly aligned labels with your address and name in all CAPS. If you're ordering small personal use amounts from trusted vendors using your home address is much less risky than sending packages to an abandoned house. Postal workers know what to look for with these tricks. You can use your name slightly misspelled or altered. Some people have reported success using names of previous tenants that lived / rented your place before.I personally have never received any mail with my name and address in capital letters - others may have, so my word on this point should not be taken as gospel, but I would imagine that most business mail is sent with the customer's name and address in lowercase, with capitalisation only used in the necessary places. Some postal services did recommend in the past that details be in caps so as the machine could read it more easily, but with the advent of modern scanning technology this is no longer a necessity, and I believe it would make the letter / package stand out amongst your other mail.Never misspell or alter your name. You want your order to blend in with your other mail as much as possible. Your mailman or mailwoman will notice a misspelled name; the first time they may shrug it off, but if the see it repeatedly they may think something is up.Put it this way: if you were ordering something from the likes of Amazon or ebay, wouldn't you be sure to spell your name correctly? Your mail has to look like any other online purchase. Some people try to combine a misspelled name with a "someone's trying to frame me" excuse. If someone were trying to frame you with drugs that they likely spent money on, it'll be someone that has a vendetta against you. You can be damn sure they'll Facebook or Google you to ensure they spell your name correctly so the "Look, they spelled my name wrong, I'm being framed!" excuse goes out the window.Using the name of a previous tenant is risky as they may have set up mail forwarding. Some people still receive mail for previous tenants, but mail forwarding doesn't always forward all mail (junkmail etc. is often still sent to the tenant's previous address.) By doing this, you risk your purchase being forwarded to the ex-tenant.Best case scenario: they use drugs and think it's awesome that someone sent them a freebie.Worst case scenario: they receive a package of drugs or white powder in the mail and immediately call the police who see your address on the package as it was forwarded, thereby putting your address on their radar.ALWAYS use your real name and real address for orders. Some have had success with P.O. boxes opened up with fake ID's. I have no experience with that though so I can't comment on it - again, a search of the forums will throw up threads with the necessary information.Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 amLets say your order doesn't arrive or something went wrong, that is what the RESOLVE button is for. Just wanted to add a bit here about Resolution and Auto-Finalization:If your order has not arrived after about 13 days, hit the Resolve button. This will take your order to the Resolution Center, as orngecapsule has already outlined. Here you will be given the option of asking the vendor for a refund, asking for a re-ship, extending the time-frame for your order to reach you or come to some other agreement with your vendor. Personally, I always extend by another 5 - 7 days because the postal service, whilst usually fairly efficient, does occasionally take longer than expected. If needs-be, I will extend again.The initial time extension begins at the end of the 17 day period (when your vendor marks your order as 'in transit', it will be 17 days before the order auto-finalizes) so if you enter resolution on day 13 and offer a 7 day extension, it will be 11 days (the 4 days left out of the 17 day period, plus the 7 days you're extending by) before it comes the attention of Resolution Center administrators again. You can ask to change the terms of resolution at any time, and you can also Finalize at any time if your product has arrived and the Resolution process will automatically be closed.Always enter Resolution a couple of days before the auto-finalization date. One of the things vendors hate most is expecting their money after the 17 day period, only for the buyer to enter resolution and propose an extension 2 hours before auto-finalization. If you haven't logged in for a few days and it IS a couple of hours before finalization, hit 'resolve' and explain in the note section that you hadn't logged in, apologize for entering resolution so close to the auto-finalization date and propose a time extension. Once an order is in the resolution center it will not auto-finalize.If a % refund is requested and the amount of the refund is disputed by the vendor, the matter will be settled by the administrator dealing with the resolution. If the vendor has a specific refund policy, then you have agreed to that upon ordering and that is the refund that you will receive, if any. If the vendor can produce a DCN proving that the item in question was sent, then the proof backs up the vendor and SR will usually side with them. However, the reputation of both the member and the vendor and their respective Purchasing / Selling stats will also weigh in on the administrator's decision.Quote from: orngecapsule on September 28, 2012, 04:46 am1) When you're required to FE, you're forced to leave feedback before receiving your product. Most people just write: "FE, will update when arrives" but they never actually update that feedback. Please take the time to update your feedback once you receive your items so others can read and learn from your experience. We hate seeing a vendor with all 5/5 feedback saying "FE, will update later" and no REVIEWS about the actual product.To update your feedback, go to 'Account' on SR and you'll see 'View Feedback'. There you can modify / edit your feedback. Always think about the community and how to better serve us all.On the topic of FE, if one does choose to Finalize Early they are not forced to leave feedback there and then. After clicking 'Finalize', they simply need to click on any link to take them away from item feedback page, and they can then leave their feedback when they receive their item. This prevents a load of "FE, will update when received" etc. feedbacks on the vendor's page.Other than that, the only things I can recommend new members to do is read the following fully and carefully:Silk Road Wiki:http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/wikiSilk Road Buyer's Guide:http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/index.php/silkroad/buyers_guideSilk Road Seller's Guide (in order to give you a better understanding of how the whole process works):http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/index.php/silkroad/sellers_guideThanks for taking the advice on board and amending your post, orngecapsule! Some people would take such a request the wrong way; feel free to PM me your SR username or provide me with a Bitcoin address so as I can send you a little something for taking the time out to write up something so helpful for new members of this community. :)- grahamgreene