<p><strong>As a peer:</strong> </p>

<ul>
<li>You can derive the approximate location (GeoIP for IPv4, latencies and allocations for IPv6) unless the node is operating as a hidden service. </li>
<li>You can query the node for it's version number. </li>
<li>You can query the node for current date and time.</li>
<li>You can query some of the nodes recent connections with the <code>addr</code> host discovery mechanism, giving you the IP address and the time the node last saw the peer. </li>
</ul>

<p><strong>As someone with universal access to a nodes connection:</strong></p>

<ul>
<li>You can see which transactions (and addresses) belong to a user.</li>
</ul>

<p>That's about it really unless you want to start poking around for other services, such as a web server on port 80 which would give you a lot of information about the owner, but only if it exists. <code>bitcoind</code> is designed to leak as little information as possible.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-08T08:05:49.963Z
2013-12-08T08:05:49.963Z
Anonymous
<p>Besides an IP address and broadcasting transactions, what other pieces of information can be derived from a Bitcoin node in the network?</p>

<privacy><nodes>
Bitcoin Node Data Leakage
Charles Hoskinson
# Bitcoin Node Data Leakage

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-12-08)

Besides an IP address and broadcasting transactions, what other pieces of information can be derived from a Bitcoin node in the network?

**Tags:** privacy, nodes


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2013-12-08. Score: 9 | Accepted answer

**As a peer:**

* You can derive the approximate location (GeoIP for IPv4, latencies and allocations for IPv6) unless the node is operating as a hidden service.
* You can query the node for it's version number.
* You can query the node for current date and time.
* You can query some of the nodes recent connections with the `addr` host discovery mechanism, giving you the IP address and the time the node last saw the peer.

**As someone with universal access to a nodes connection:**

* You can see which transactions (and addresses) belong to a user.

That's about it really unless you want to start poking around for other services, such as a web server on port 80 which would give you a lot of information about the owner, but only if it exists. `bitcoind` is designed to leak as little information as possible.


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