yes, I believe that Tor and Monero are more private/secure than the postal service, just like I believe that 2048-bit RSA is more secure than a padlock

interesting, I have not seen that before but if it helps, no I don’t endorse stealing accounts or buying stolen accounts. Given how easy it is to make a (non-anonymous) Protonmail account I’m inclined to believe that most accounts sold are legitimate, but one should always practice best judgement when browsing the darknet

I think you overestimate the scale. Last I checked there were only like 3-4 sellers. They could easily be making these accounts themselves. If the scale grew larger, people in poorer countries would see it as a way to make a quick buck, and start selling them as well. And if the scale grew to an enormous size, Protonmail would probably just start accepting crypto instead of just letting darknet sellers make all the money.

sounds like they complied with the court orders? Proton also doesn’t log IPs, unless ordered by court. I’m willing to bet that if a court ordered Mullvad to start logging all traffic, they would comply, at least until they were able to move jurisdictions or something

source? I have heard good things about Mullvad but I’m pretty sure they would not break laws

prior person’s information would only be released when the new user provides the details for a valid email account

fair enough, this is how the darknet market works too. You provide payment, and then the email account is given to you.

You can look at that as the free market in action, but it’s also effectively a dead end for a purpose-built group.

But wouldn’t the free market provide more? For the purpose-built group to work, say the group had 10 people. All 10 people would each ask for one email, while each supplying one email. The free market would be able to serve this group as well. If we price an email at $10, each person would sell their email for $10 and then buy one for $10 for a net gain/loss of $0. Emails are traded, and nobody gains/loses money. What the free market does is allow other goods and services to be exhanged for emails as well, like songs.

people who want to commit fraud would also be interested

Privacy tools can also be used by criminals. I prefer that police focus on the crime and not the tools used for the crime (unless those tools were built specifically for that crime in mjnd). Though there are some cases where it makes sense to regulate tools simply to reduce risk.

keep the hypotheticals coming! They’re always fun to think about.

The problem with the chain sharing idea, is all it takes is one person to not make an email for the next person, and the chain is broken.

It sounds like you are trying to create a system for anonymously trading emails. Maybe you invent a fancy system where you have to give an email in order to receive one. But why stop there? What if somebody comes along and says “I’m not very good at making emails, but I can write songs. Can I trade a song for an email address?” And then somebody else says “Sure! Man it would be nice if there were some intermediate form of value that we could use to trade goods and services, instead of just trading emails directly”. Voila, the invention of currency :). This is effectively what the darknet market is. A way to anonymously trade goods and services.

that’s good to know! I haven’t made reddit throwaways in a long time so it’s nice to know that anonymous methods still work

That’s another tricky question. I suppose it’s possible to make an anonymous online connection, chat with them long enough to be confident that they aren’t a fed, and then trade emails. Sounds like a lot of work though 😅

Some things to be cautious about though. If this is a friend that you made over non-anonymous channels, eg Facebook or Discord, then the feds may have already established a link between you two. I’m sure the feds create big social graphs that map the connections between everybody. So if you trade emails with a friend, and then do something illegal with that email, the feds go to your friend, realize that they have the wrong person, and even if your friend doesn’t give up any info, the feds might investigate you anyways due to your connection to them.

Using a nearby public wifi spot, means that the email provider has your approximate location. If the feds get involved, then combined with security camera footage they can likely track you down.

Monero provides a way for people to pay for things anonymously, and is a lot more convenient then trying to pay with cash anonymously. For some people, their privacy is more important than whatever qualms they may have against crypto. Clearly you are not one of those people, and that’s fine

There’s too many unknowns for me to feel comfortable with it. Paper bills have identifiers so you have to make sure you got them anonymously, or launder them anonymously. Use gloves for everything. Mask your face without looking too suspicious. Hope that the post system doesn’t secretly scan letter contents. Hope that the government isn’t already tracking the movements of all citizens using cameras. Etc

Often the camera footage is enough. I’ve seen enough cases where police track down criminals via security camera footage, to know how effective it can be.

Interesting idea. Honestly at first glance I thought this seemed ok, but it’s actually dangerous. Imagine if you initiated a trade with somebody and they turned out to be a fed. The fed now has the gmail account you created, and can just ask gmail who created the account. Now they have your identity, and they also know the hotmail account they gave you, so your identity is now linked to that email as well.

By definition, the only way to anonymously acquire an email account is to give zero identifying information about yourself, but by giving away an email account that you created non-anonymously, you are giving away identifying details.

I’m fairly sure Protonmail does not accept this one for the secondary email check they use during signup

Very cool I did not know this. Do they ever plan to support Monero? Physical payment methods are still unideal because security cameras can track you.

Could work in some cases, though if the feds were trying to track you down they’d have approximate location + surveillance camera footage to work from. As I said in other comments, the posted method works for extreme threat profiles

I’ve never found one that worked, which ones do you use?

I don’t quite remember since I bought it so long ago, but I think the easiest method was to simply buy some bitcoin or ethereum at an exchange (they usually don’t support monero), and then use a swap service to convert to monero. I also remember something about rinsing/washing your initial funds, by first sending them to another Monero wallet that you own? Sort of like a mixer, but since Monero transactions are mixed up by default, you can just send them to another wallet and the final wallet is now unlinked from you? To be honest I don’t even know if this step is necessary. Hopefully somebody else can pitch in here with more up-to-date tips.

As for your VPN concerns, if you can’t use a VPN all the time, reading online it seems like the official Monero GUI wallet supports Tor, though I haven’t tried it so I can’t really help here

Edit: in case you haven’t heard of Tails or Whonix, I’d also recommend looking into those if you care strongly about privacy. Be warned that they are fairly inconvenient to use though

Edit2: it seems like the extra step of sending the funds from one monero wallet to another one that you own, is unnecessary. If you use a KYC exchange, then use a (non-NYC) swap to convert to Monero and transfer to your wallet, then you should be fine. Though it can’t hurt to send the money to a second wallet, sort of like adding a hop to the onion routing system used by Tor.

Also, apparently Monero feather wallet has good Tor support. You can read more on reddit or the Dread forums on Tor

I have had spotty success with Tuta in the past. Out of the 5-10 times I tried, maybe 2-3 succeeded. And I had to wait 1-2 day before I could find out whether or not it succeeded, and if it failed I’d have no idea why. I just found the process way too annoying, and I’m willing to pay a few bucks to save myself the trouble. And, last I remember, the voucher can only be used to upgrade an account, but the problem is creating an account in the first place

The post is about creating accounts anonymously. I think you are talking about preventing the email recipient from knowing who you are. I am talking about preventing the email provider (Gmail, Protonmail) and the government (who can compel companies to track users) from knowing who you are.

This is an extreme threat model that takes a lot of effort, but one that some may find useful nonetheless

is that legally identity theft? Creating accounts and then transferring them to others? I’m sure it violates ToS but I wasn’t aware that it was illegal