Notes on Privacy
Important Notes on Privacy
Before you jump headfirst into running a lightning node, you must ask yourself
- What is your objective to operate a node? (making payments to friends and family, receiving payments, merchant node, routing node, any other?)
- How much of your privacy you are willing to give up in order to pursue your objective? Remember it is your own choice.
The notes cannot be comprehensive and you must be willing to do your own research. Do not trust. Verify. Internet is full of dangerous people and not all advice you receive is comprehensive however "expert" the person providing it appears. Listen to all, decide for your own.
SOME LIGHTNING PRIVACY NOTES/REFERENCES
Remember some of these might not use practical if your intention is to run a routing node. As always, do your own research.
Telgram:
If your Telegram account is tied to your phone and legal identity, then if you announce your node publicly on telegram you are tying your node to your phone and your legal identity, You can change your privacy settings in Telegram to mask your phone number and use nym. However, governments can still get this data. There are also risks to communicating about your particular node on all public channels as well regarding the metadata you leak. For example, a particular way of writing
Cheeserobot: Resolves IDs to TG handles. There are privacy risks when TG is attached to a real-world identity, online pseudonym, or IP. Cheeserobot is also a closed source service, so it’s not public information everything that Cheeserobot does.
Privacy Suggestions For senders
1. One UTXO per node on a private channel. Ideally mixed and for the complete amount. Pick a well-connected node to route THROUGH them. 2. Do not send directly to your desired channel partner. Pick a well-connected node to route THROUGH them. 3. When done, deplete your channel completely and close it out. 4. Given enough time, this channel would be known to the network and probe-able, so do not keep these disposable nodes for long. 5. Send payments in small increments.
Privacy Suggestions For receivers
1. Never open a channel with a UTXO you own. Get others to open a channel with their UTXO or source a UTXO to open a channel with. Some sources could be Bitrefill Thor, Lightning Lab’s Loop Out, LNBig, Yalls, etc. 2. If you want to send some funds on-chain, either use a service like Loop Out or close the channel and mix your funds first. 3. Use Tor only and do not use any sort of alias. Also use a VPN as Tor does not encrypt all data. 4. Do not share invoices publicly. 5. Do not tell others you own a particular node. 6. Do not create invoices with memos that have revealing information.
Resources
Current State of Lightning: https://abytesjourney.com/lightning-privacy/