Even so, anything that allows you to omit one more bit of entropy can make you safer by making you more anonymous. We've already seen a few high profile attacks where the attacker exploited a vulnerability that arose out of how two or more services handle personally identifiable information. The Apple/Amazon one is one such example. The security professionals at each company choose to request different bits of entropy to identify someone and may give out other bits of entropy not among their identity bits. When two or more services complement each other in this regard, you can contact the first to get information to give to the second.
Facebook makes this even worse in that is exposes a lots of the commonly requested bits of entropy. It's not hard to identify someone's mother on Facebook. From there, you can identify her parents (if still alive) or brothers and cousins, to get her maiden name. Now if your birthday is visible or published anywhere, an attacker has yet another bit of entropy. Add enough together and an attacker now has enough information to walk into a bank agency with your bank account number and possibly gain access to your account.
TBH, we're at the point where it shouldn't be legal to secure accounts with any method that involves multiple bits of entropy. Any system that permits someone close to you (friends or family) to pretend to be you simply isn't secure. These days you don't even need to bother with power of attorney because it is so stupidly easy to impersonate one's parents, significant other, sibling, children, etc.
'The company said that the Danish police were examining the case but added that the authorities could “not classify this as a theft due to the current nonregulation of Bitcoin.” '
This is of course ridiculous. Something doesn't have to be regulated in order for it to be considered theft if you take it.
"Stealing" a bitcoin involves exchanging messages. There is no physical movement of objects, no direct financial effect, and not even an obvious copyright infringement.
The law needs to comprehend what was stolen, and assess the damages. Or treat this as a computer-hacking (unauthorized access) case.
I don't expect it'll be hard for the law to comprehend. Sure it's digital property, but unlike a lot of things digital it actually functions mostly by the same rules as physical property (only one person has any given bitcoin at a time, &c).
There are businesses dedicated to buying, selling and producing it. It can also be exchanged for goods and services, is easily valued in and converted to USD and other currencies, and fluctuates in value depending on supply and demand.
I picked WoW instead of a game like EVE Online because scamming is not an expected part of the game.
I'm not aware of any criminal proceedings against people who stole WoW gold, but it is an entirely different matter if actual money (i.e. USD) was taken.
Their stance and the same from a lot of publications can in fact be in the long term interest of the bitcoin believers.
The reason is simple; it will keep away the speculators who understand neither bitcoin nor the principles of speculation.
Speculation is mostly about stellar risk management and knowing when and how to take profits. People who change their opinions by day to day (or hour to hour) fluctuations and are swayed by headlines will never learn these principles.
I am getting tired of seeing people liquidate all their investments and invest them into the X new big thing. A new generation of fools come around every 3-5 years. Their opinions change faster than their under-garments and their risk management skills are slow to evolve.
The benefit in keeping them away is simple, lesser volatility. BTC is in desperate need of THAT for its sustainability.
I say we need more vocal naysayers to keep these speculators away, at the same time the believers can work on developing the marketplace and make it sustainable.
Psst: In the credit card and banking world, fraud is quicker than the law too, or else no one would be able to get away with it (except by physical cash-out), given that we know exactly where the money went.
It happened because I though that if I could point to the exact local address the wire went to, then the immense paper trail would mean they could reverse the transfer in case of blatant fraud, hopefully while also arresting the people responsible.
Now I know better though. But not by listening to the NYT's assurances about how much more diligently the banking system prevents outright fraud.
Ouch. yeah. I do use checks, and those also have unpleasant fraud implications, but it seems like the response to such fraud usually turns out better with checks than with wire transfers. Most people I've heard about who have had people steal money through bad checks just had a big mess to deal with[1], while most people I've heard about who had money stolen through wire transfers actually lost the money. Just my impression from hearing about different folks complaining about it.
Bitcoin is much less murky than the NSA. It's completely open software and the engineers discuss and develop it out in public for anyone to audit. And nobody's forced to use it or be susceptible to it, again unlike the doings of the NSA. And my exposure to fraud or PII threat due to Bitcoin is much much less than due to the mechanisms the NSA has in place, with their massive 24/7 passive/active snooping operation which puts truly gigantic amounts of ostensibly private communications world-wide at risk of being leaked/sold/traded-on by bad actors. Furthermore, the way the Bitcoin economic system, how it stores and transmits money is also much much more open, and thus less murky, than the legacy banking systems.
But Bitcoin. Yes, that's a "murky" world. Lets FUD and regulate that.
Is every hn story now an excuse to start complaining about the NSA? The piece makes no mention of it, nor does there seem to be a good reason why it should.
You could have easily ranted about the murky world of campaign finance, or the murky world of banking. Neither would be less relevant than beating on the NSA horse one more time.
What tends to actually happen in the altcoin pump and dumps (None of the Twitter pumpers do BTC or even LTC since it would take too much money):
The pumpers build a position in a selected altcoin. They do this slowly, over a period of time, hoping that no one will notice. Only once they are satisfied with their position do they announce their "pump". They broadcast the idea of "pumping" that coin by a massive coordinated buy. The masses intend to buy in, bidding up the price and then selling off at the higher price.
The problem is that the people coordinating the pump already have their coins. And so as the people they recruited are buying, they're buying coins from the coordinators. When that activity starts to taper off, the coordinators will dump whatever they have left, completely trashing the price, often below the starting point. So the coordinators are the only ones who benefit at all.
There's various tricks they also use to make it more convincing, with bid walls and talk of "noob traps", but at this point it's happened so often that willing dupes are getting hard to find.
Most pumps these days barely move the price at all. Fontas is so infamous that his pump announcements often result in the price immediately going down.
Almost all this activity is on one exchange, BTC-E, which is the only exchange with a variety of alt-coins and the volume for a pump n dump. There have been attempts to get them going on Cryptsy, with its much wider variety of alts, but that site is so awfully coded that it runs too slowly to allow for any sort of coordinated activity.
There have been rumors that there are less public groups running pump and dumps on BTC, which would require substantially more money at this point. There's also clear signs of "dump and pumps" on BTC, where someone will sell a large amount of BTC in hopes of causing a price avalanche, and then they will buy in at the resulting cheaper price.
Given the amount of money to be made, those are almost certainly true rumors.
Having said all that, I think some of the smaller pumpers on Twitter are just looking to drive the price up on certain coins, I don't think they're necessarily looking to take advantage of their followers.
> Fontas is so infamous that his pump announcements often result in the price immediately going down.
That could be a useful trick. If you know you can consistently reduce prices, and have the capital to acquire the now cheaper commodity. Announce the scheme, prices drop, buy in. Wait for prices to recover and sell off for a profit.
