Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Gee-man on December 06, 2011, 05:33 am
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I am just getting started here, and am curious about best practices regarding identities on Silk Road.
Is it generally accepted to use a single identity (i.e. Gee-man) for selling, buying, forum posting, tormail etc. on silk road and related sites, or is it recommended to maintain separate identities for different activities?
On one hand, maintaining separate identities can be important for preventing LE or others from linking certain activities. On the other hand, reputation is clearly important for navigating these waters, and just on a practical level I can see it quickly becoming a PIA to constantly be checking too many accounts.
Experience, thoughts, tools of the trade?
Thanks,
G
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when you use the same handle for buying and selling you're giving away more info that i would be comfortable with to a lot of other SR members who may or may not have your best interests at heart
buyers have buyer stats, vendors have reviews and often times their own threads on the forums...why not have a handful of accounts for various purposes as long as you're consistent, safety in numbers
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I am just getting started here, and am curious about best practices regarding identities on Silk Road.
Is it generally accepted to use a single identity (i.e. Gee-man) for selling, buying, forum posting, tormail etc. on silk road and related sites, or is it recommended to maintain separate identities for different activities?
On one hand, maintaining separate identities can be important for preventing LE or others from linking certain activities. On the other hand, reputation is clearly important for navigating these waters, and just on a practical level I can see it quickly becoming a PIA to constantly be checking too many accounts.
Experience, thoughts, tools of the trade?
Thanks,
G
You're posting questions so.... ignorant... you sound like LE. I'm not accusing you of being LE. You have at least a couple questions that remind me of a county / municipality detective's questions after busting a 16 year old and having him show you how to use TOR and SR Forums.
So... What do you think Gee-man? Do you think it's a good idea to have the same identity across multiple anonymous sites? Or do you think it's better to be anonymous?
BTW, I love your username. You use that at SR sir?
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I am just getting started here, and am curious about best practices regarding identities on Silk Road.
Best practice is whatever you're comfortable with, I guess. Some people use the same nickname as they are using tons of other places, others come up with something new that cannot be linked to their real identity in any way. Some people will have one identity when they are selling, and another when they are buying. And some people will probably have different accounts on the forum as well.
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I am just getting started here, and am curious about best practices regarding identities on Silk Road.
Is it generally accepted to use a single identity (i.e. Gee-man) for selling, buying, forum posting, tormail etc. on silk road and related sites, or is it recommended to maintain separate identities for different activities?
On one hand, maintaining separate identities can be important for preventing LE or others from linking certain activities. On the other hand, reputation is clearly important for navigating these waters, and just on a practical level I can see it quickly becoming a PIA to constantly be checking too many accounts.
Experience, thoughts, tools of the trade?
Thanks,
G
You're posting questions so.... ignorant... you sound like LE. I'm not accusing you of being LE. You have at least a couple questions that remind me of a county / municipality detective's questions after busting a 16 year old and having him show you how to use TOR and SR Forums.
So... What do you think Gee-man? Do you think it's a good idea to have the same identity across multiple anonymous sites? Or do you think it's better to be anonymous?
BTW, I love your username. You use that at SR sir?
lol. well played.
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I am asking "stupid/ignorant" questions for a few reasons:
1) It seems that there seems to be range of behaviors on certain things - (use of / renewing IDs, acquiring bitcoins, information security, disclosure of certain behaviors, etc.) I figured I would directly ask the questions to get some direct opinions.
2) One of the specifically stated ways to figure out if one should trust new participants is to check out if they have have a track record on forums / elsewhere - which requires both using a common ID and actually participating in conversations.
3) Generally, the attitude towards noob questions has been that it is better to ask that not, so I have just gone for it.
Thanks Squirrel & SR for your thoughts.
And, yeah, I thought the handle might be pushing the irony button a little bit. :)
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2) One of the specifically stated ways to figure out if one should trust new participants is to check out if they have have a track record on forums / elsewhere - which requires both using a common ID and actually participating in conversations.
There are only two places you should look; the SR market place website and this forum. All new users have to start at the bottom and build a good track record. I don't care what you're doing and how you behave on other sites, as long as you maintain a good track record on SR.
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Is it generally accepted to use a single identity (i.e. Gee-man) for selling, buying, forum posting, tormail etc. on silk road and related sites, or is it recommended to maintain separate identities for different activities?
At minimum people should have completely separate identities for buying, selling, forum-as-buyer, and forum-as-seller. Possibly another one for just chatting on the forum.
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There are only two places you should look; the SR market place website and this forum.
I would add the SILC chat as a third place. Of course, one cannot be sure that the person chatting with a given username is the same as the person with that username on the forums or the main site, but the same can be said of the forums and the main site, and GPG can be used to establish consistent identity when necessary.
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identity
establish consistent identity
specifically stated
best practices
clearly important for navigating these waters
PIA
this vocabulary is either: 1. LE, 2. Social Worker/state welfare etc or 3. a fed of some kind (could be non LE agency) ie possibly an engineer. Definitely older and educated, accustomed to using clear and accepted description in his/her world, no slang except for the three letter acronym (PIA).
Sounds to me like he is either trying to profile us or he is way too straight to be served in the real world and really wants to buy stuff
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this vocabulary is either: 1. LE, 2. Social Worker/state welfare etc or 3. a fed of some kind (could be non LE agency) ie possibly an engineer. Definitely older and educated, accustomed to using clear and accepted description in his/her world, no slang except for the three letter acronym (PIA).
Sounds to me like he is either trying to profile us or he is way too straight to be served in the real world and really wants to buy stuff
It sounds crazy...but I have to agree with your analysis. Also, the nature of the questions is just....gee-man
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He is also asking about how many people got busted using SR in another topic.
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this vocabulary is either: 1. LE, 2. Social Worker/state welfare etc or 3. a fed of some kind (could be non LE agency) ie possibly an engineer. Definitely older and educated, accustomed to using clear and accepted description in his/her world, no slang except for the three letter acronym (PIA).
Good call dobbs, and in his other post he uses the word 'protocol' at least once ...
protocol is a strange word to use in this context, even if it fits.
if gee-man is LE they won't use that account to post again. It would be a violation of department 'protocol' for 'best practices' that 'specifically stated' to not 'establish consistent identity' that 'identifies' you as LE.
Of course this analysis just made LE a little smarter, but wtf, LE posing as buyers here makes no difference, and anyway, good undercover agents (ICE / DEA / FBI etc) would not make such stupid mistakes. If gee-man is LE he probably a local small town detective or regular cop assigned to look into this because some high school kid's mom found weed he bought here and called the police. or who fucking knows.
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I will admit to being older and educated. Sorry to disappoint you that I am not LE or anything close. I just look at things little differently than most, I suppose - which generally has been a good thing.
I will try to dumb down my language and questions if it makes y'all nervous. Maybe start another thread or three on how bitcoin or pgp work?
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You'd be better off just reading than posting. The information is out there. Asking question when the information is there for you to read can make *some* people angry.
If you run into problems I'd go for it, though.
You can find out about GPG/PGP etc., how to aquire bitcoins on non-onion sites: https://bitcointalk.org/ for one.
Although, you will find the same information here. It's common knowledge--mostly.
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I will admit to being older and educated. Sorry to disappoint you that I am not LE or anything close. I just look at things little differently than most, I suppose - which generally has been a good thing.
I will try to dumb down my language and questions if it makes y'all nervous. Maybe start another thread or three on how bitcoin or pgp work?
Your level of education relative to a large group of anonymous people and 'dumbing down your questions' has absolutely nothing to do with what any of us are saying about your vocabulary. You're not using any words we don't understand, don't worry. But dictio is precisely right, just read for awhile, when you're comfortable make an order from a seller with a track record, and then if you still have questions post them up. Don't ask about 'identity protocol' and 'how many people have gotten busted on SR' with a handle like gman out of nowhere and then imply we 'don't get you' and you need to dumb down your questions. you need to smarten your questions up, son.
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I will admit to being older and educated. Sorry to disappoint you that I am not LE or anything close. I just look at things little differently than most, I suppose - which generally has been a good thing.
I will try to dumb down my language and questions if it makes y'all nervous. Maybe start another thread or three on how bitcoin or pgp work?
Nah, it's alright, I don't think you're a cop. People *hope* cops would do something like using geeman as username. But anyway, you touched pretty much on the real reason people use the same identity, because they feel that it gives them more credibility with vendors and stuff. As you're also finding out, on most questions, we just don't know, or at least, certainly don't all agree.
I don't think it matters all that much, myself: the areas one needs to be most careful about are the when you buy, and when you pick up. Don't ever give out any info you don't have to, but buyers unfortunately *have* to give out more info than vendors do, so often we will disagree on what best practices are.
Longer i'm here, more I realize we are all over the place on most of this stuff, and are still in early days of this site, so until something really *bad* happens, we won't know how best to prevent it. They roll a bunch of us up...then we'll know :(
Any LE wanting to take all this shit to a courtroom is welcome to it...try just explaining *bitcoins* to a jury of our peers hahaha....
Best advice--and I've done it myself--is just to read thru all the security forums from the beginning...shouldn't take but a couple hrs to breeze thru it, and most of this stuff has been hashed out, and as usual, we don't agree :)
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I offered three other alternatives to Gee-man being LE...anyone read that far? :o
Social worker, engineer or non LE Fed (USDA, FAA etc). All of those people talk that way at work.
On this forum, we are phd level, masters level, we are high school drop outs, we are 45, 70, 19 years old. One thing we all have in common is that we were smart enough to find SR and this forum. We are bums, Engineers, probably some LE who use secretly, Secretaries, Dishwashers, Lawyers, Writers, Teachers etc. What we all have in common is discretion. Collectively we see all styles of writing, speech and acceptability. All vary from group to group a lot!
If LE is reading this, why don't you go hunt down that one poster in this forum who was looking for Ricin or some other poisons. He is way more threatening to the general public.
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In the end, only the paranoid survive, so really no harm / no foul in questioning unusual behavior.
Ultimately, calling out unusual behavior only protects the group (as is it's intent). It was also a lesson for me. It won't be the first time I have stuck in out in crowd.
Fortunately, I am generally a pretty fast learner. So we will see how it goes from here.
Lesson learned, and I appreciate the input.
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there are no stupid questions, just stupid answers.
if we want SR to thrive we'll have to face the fact that there will be many ignorant people trying to use this revolutionary free market that we call SR without getting busted. there are so many mistakes a noob can make when first using SR, so lets try to help people comfortably use this service instead of acting like conceited dickheads.
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I will admit to being older and educated. Sorry to disappoint you that I am not LE or anything close. I just look at things little differently than most, I suppose - which generally has been a good thing.
I will try to dumb down my language and questions if it makes y'all nervous. Maybe start another thread or three on how bitcoin or pgp work?
Maybe you could use the search function.
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I will admit to being older and educated. Sorry to disappoint you that I am not LE or anything close. I just look at things little differently than most, I suppose - which generally has been a good thing.
I will try to dumb down my language and questions if it makes y'all nervous. Maybe start another thread or three on how bitcoin or pgp work?
Maybe you could use the search function.
This.
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Damn Dobbs, that was an impressive breakdown and analysis of his post. You a fan of social engineering too?
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I have lived many different lives in my short time on earth, and have seen a lot of very different cultures that sometimes exist side by side with no crossover. Every now and then one of us moves to another culture sometimes without realizing it.
If we live long enough and live inquisitively we can learn a lot about acceptable speech patterns, posture and expressed emotion not only in different careers but also in different economic structures.
For example:
A factory that also has office space. Most of the factory workers have limited formal education, not all but most, and exist side by side with the engineers of said factory. Neither is "better" than the other but their worlds are very different. Someone who came from one world and moved to the other would have a serious period of adjustment while they learned the new rules no matter which group they were moving into or out of. They would need to talk different, sit different, laugh louder or softer etc all the very small details would have to be learned.
Kind of like when one gender tranforms to another gender.
I like to people watch and I do find it interesting. Of course, my experience is limited to certain areas of the world so there's so much more to learn.
I dont do this for a living or anything so I may be talking out my butt, but I do like it.