Author: anonym Date: To: The Tails public development discussion list Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] Set coin selection to "privacy" by default in
Electrum
Michael English: >> Anyway: I personally don't feel responsible for maintaining the
>> Electrum integration in Tails, would rather not to become more
>> involved into it, and will therefore let its maintainer (i.e. anonym)
>> make the call. But I'm genuinely curious about the unspent outputs
>> optimization claim; I bet my intuition is wrong, and I'll learn
>> something along the way :)
>>
>> Cheers,
>
> Anonym, I did not expect this to be a controversial change. If you
> also think that it is controversial, then maybe we should keep it
> disabled and let the user decide.
Note that I haven't chimed in with my opinion yet. :) I think intrigeri is just careful: privacy features are routinely exaggerated in their efficacy and can easily have many unexpected effects; for instance, playing with such parameters often introduces fingerprintability ("this user seems to have enabled the non-default feature X, which Tails enables, so +1 indication that this is a Tails user"). It's hard to weigh weigh such advantages and disadvantages against each other, especially when the domain (blockchain) is not well-known, which at least is the case for me (intrigeri has read up in the past weeks for other reasons, so he's definitely in a better position to evaluate).
So, if the decision comes down to me, I'd delegate to our community. That's also hard. Now we have two voices in favour, none against, and some probably good arguments for those that know how the blockchain works. If we can get some argument why enabling this feature won't have nasty consequences (e.g. increased fingerprintability) and get some more people to join in support for this change, I'd do it. I am afraid this is the best I can do.
