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On the Anonymity of Banknotes

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Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 3424))

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Abstract

In this paper we analyze the anonymity of banknote based payments. We show how to model intermediary-chains and present statistical methods that can be used by banks to extract information on the length of the chain from deposited banknotes. If the bank has discovered a chain of length zero, the anonymity of the payment is immediately revoked. To protect against such deanonymizations, customers have to be very careful when spending banknotes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal Office for Information Security, Godesberger Allee 185-189, 53175, Bonn, Germany

    Dennis Kügler

Authors
  1. Dennis Kügler
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International,  

    David Martin

  2. The Free Haven Project,  

    Andrei Serjantov

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Kügler, D. (2005). On the Anonymity of Banknotes. In: Martin, D., Serjantov, A. (eds) Privacy Enhancing Technologies. PET 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3424. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11423409_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11423409_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26203-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31960-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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