[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#696477: bitcoind: Please remove misleading 'anonymous' from manual page

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

Package: bitcoind
Version: 0.3.19~dfsg-4
Tags: patch
Severity: minor

The bitcoind(1) manual page claim the bitcoin currency is anonymous.
This isn't normally the case, as all transactions are available for
everyone, and thus network analysis can be used to track transactions
and people.  It can be made anonymous, if great care is taken to ensure
address-person bindings are kept secret, but most users do not do this.

I discovered the issue when I across this change in the Ubuntu PPA
package available from
<URL: https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin/ >:

bitcoin (0.5.2-natty1) natty; urgency=low

  * Remove mentions on anonymity in package descriptions and manpage.
    These should never have been there, bitcoin isnt anonymous without
    a ton of work that virtually no users will ever be willing and
    capable of doing

 -- Matt Corallo <matt at bluematt.me>  Sat, 7 Jan 2012 13:37:00 -0500

--- bitcoin/debian/manpages/bitcoind.1  2012-12-20 23:22:16.000000000 +0100
+++ bitcoin_0.7.2-quantal2/debian/manpages/bitcoind.1   2012-09-17 19:44:39.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 .TH BITCOIND "1" "January 2011" "bitcoind 3.19" 
 .SH NAME
-bitcoind \- peer-to-peer network based anonymous digital currency
+bitcoind \- peer-to-peer network based digital currency
 .SH SYNOPSIS
 bitcoin [options] <command> [params]  
 .TP

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen