Topic:
How Dangerous, really , is it to use privnote, or other non-PGP forms of encryption.
My view: PGP has been tried and true thus far for the DN community. There are very few ways it can fail you. There is no real good reason not to use it. And it is clery much safer than texting/phone calls(even on encrypted, off the grid sat phones) email, any smartphoe app. etc. PGP is better than anything else out there save telepathy. Because communicaton is a must and the most effcent method of modern communication is Internet. ='s Internet users demand secured ways of communication.
Devil's Advcate: So The argument in favor of privnote's competitors(PGP) is that our third party middle-men (the MP's) between the buyers and vendor is unstable and could and has failed us. When that happens(getting seized by LE) we risk our communication across the site will be leaked. Visable to all of Law Enfrcemnt and accessible by the D.A. who will end up prosecuting you, and reading your conversations to a judge& jury. However, it is understood that privnote, while compromised, is typically safe for the majority of its users, the majority of the time. And if all of asudden a DNMP got raided, LE has access to all non-PGP messages In plain text now. Well, LE needs to assume that all significant-sized orders would at least be encrypted by the best software out there(PGP) and therefore next to impossible to build a case with anything found during this particular raid. So LE turns its money&manpower to either trying to build a case against big buyers and vendors using other methods OR pursuing those conversations that they CAN decrypt despite pooring through all those decrypted conversations, I think we all know that LE would acsolutely still gravitate towards the sales they can trace(and decrypt) of the buyers of NON-PERSONAL AMOUNTS.
Which is what it comes d0own to. IF and when privnote fails which in and of itself is rare, the own strategy of LE is to chase the big fish and leave the buyers and vendors of real personal quantities alone. They are too lazy to use the best encryption available(b/c they realize its only a small amount and "Who would care?") but their rasoning(more of a wager) is that the amount of money and effort that it would cost LE to locate&prosecute you outweighs the amount of determination they have to bust you for whatever menial quantity you got.
NEVER use privnote or similar services that claim to offer self-destructing messages.
Absolutely nothing prevents such services from storing your message even after it was 'officially' destroyed. On top of that they also require Javascript, which is a huge no-go.
Just encrypt your messages with PGP like every other market user and send them using the internal market messaging system. Also avoid vendors that use privnote or similar services.
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