Blackmail fail

In which the author receives surprising offers from kind strangers In September 201214ya, I was extorted for $48.76$322012 for being gwern; I declined to pay. In November 201313ya, I called an encryption bluff that I was Dread Pirate Roberts. In December 201313ya, a crazy person tried to blackmail me for billions of dollars for being Satoshi Nakamoto; I declined to pay. In March 201412ya, the DNM Evolution threatened to dox me if I did not reveal information about their security vulnerabilities. In February 201511ya, an Agora user doxed me in an unexpected way and I paid a small bounty. Weird things happen on the Internet, sometimes. I have long been interested in cryptographic topics, and in June 201115ya, I began researching the new darknet markets (DNMs), as epitomized by Silk Road 1 (SR). Between my sustained coverage of DNM topics, occasional interventions like my Sheep-MarketPlace/BlackMarket-Reloaded bet, and my minor role in the doxing of Sheep MarketPlace’s owner, and my essays Bitcoin is Worse is Better & Time-lock cryptography, I have been sometimes accused of being more involved than I appear - possibly Dread Pirate Roberts (really Ross Ulbricht), Satoshi Nakamoto1, a high-level seller, a law enforcement agent, or other things. While sometimes flattering (I wish I was Satoshi Nakamoto!), these are all quite wrong: I am but an impoverished writer who barely makes ends meet, and certainly not a Bitcoin billionaire or elite C++ P2P crypto programmer, though I write about Bitcoin/cryptography/DNMs. Still, some tinge of notoriety can be useful if it means people are willing to tell me private information. On the other hand, sometimes it is plain irritating. They don’t always go anywhere. Here are some examples of things that went nowhere, or at least, not where I wanted them to go. Pseudonymity Bounty Prompted by my bounty to nwerg, I offered a bounty 2016–42020 of $18.87$152020 to anyone who can de-anonymize me in a way I do not already know about or which is impressive; I no longer offer this. (As of December 2017, I paid out 2 bounties, and 3 have declined payment; for the ~3 earlier deanonymizations, I did not have a bounty set up. There have also been a few wrong attempts to claim the bounty, some surprisingly convincing looking.) 2012 Anonymous 10 September On 2012-09-10, I returned from my dinner to discover in my inbox news of a message someone sent me at 4:55PM using my anonymous feedback form: gwern I signed up usernames “gwern” and “gwernbranwen” at pivory.com I will release login info to you for a ransom. The ransom value decreases over time following exponential decay with a half-life of 365/2=182.5 days. It starts at 32 USD on 2012-09-11. I’ll allow a 1 day precision. Payment is to be sent as Bitcoin using MtGox average price to 1LtiftPcu3AjTbXf2XFCbvNTaeRFL1yBAy After 365 days I will start using the accounts. notgwern@tormail.org Oh no! I was being extorted over a username on some forum site called Pivory. Was I going to pay up $48.76$322012 to rescue my doppelganger from the clutches of a sinister extortionist? Did he plan to post threats against the President or child porn on this site to besmirch my good name? I knew I had to act swiftly to stanch the damage! I told him no. More precisely, I posted the following signed message to Google+ and a private mailing list, publicly committing to not paying him a single satoshi: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 CCing cheshirecats as site owner; CCing OB-NYC as witnesses. > gwern > I signed up usernames "gwern" and "gwernbranwen" at pivory.com > I will release login info to you for a ransom. > The ransom value decreases over time following exponential decay with a half-life of 365/2=182.5 days. > It starts at 32 USD on 2012-09-11. I'll allow a 1 day precision. > Payment is to be sent as Bitcoin using MtGox average price to 1LtiftPcu3AjTbXf2XFCbvNTaeRFL1yBAy > After 365 days I will start using the accounts. > notgwern@tormail.org Your message in my anonymous site feedback form leaves me deeply amused, and I applaud your courtesy in setting the 365-day ransom at a modest $8 (2 half-lives from $32); but I'm afraid I must decline your offer permanently. Since there are indefinitely many Internet sites which allow user signups and publicly visible comments, accepting an extortion on any of them for any amount exposes me to indefinitely large losses. Hence by backward induction, there is a clear decision-theoretic verdict against paying you any sum. - -- gwern https://www.gwern.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREKAAYFAlKuIbAACgkQvpDo5Pfl1oLzlwCgltduvcnKy2GB5Lmz6EtBTknT fRIAnRtF4DVLmoW8fGAR32fFFeuIqG24 =+rda -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- (See decision theory and backward induction for background. I think my little argument may not be quite right, but it’s still clear that a precommitment to not paying in such circumstances is optimal for the same reason one precommits to not negotiate with hostage-takers etc.) Discussion One curious aspect was that the payment declined with time, rather than, as one would expect, increase with time as a penalty. Michael O’Kelly in the Google+ comments pointed out that the scheme was also in conflict with option-value/learning: Am I missing something, or would it make more sense for the ransom to increase exponentially? You will only really be tempted to pay if Pivory becomes the hot new thing, which becomes less ambiguous with time. I theorized that it was not motivated by a particular economic or decision-theoretic consideration, but more of a psychological hack: Michael: I figured it was an attempt to hack convenience; if I paid up quickly, he’d make the most. Most people would not be patient enough to wait. (You’re right that you and I would choose a compounding strategy, like any regular extortionist, to instead incentivize quick payment by all sorts of people.) Of course, he must not know me very well, because if he did, he would’ve known that I would simply put payment on my calendar for a year from now and pay as little as possible, or better yet, wait for him to actually start using the accounts and only paying up if it looked like he could do some damage with it. Арсений Алексеев pointed out an additional failing if we took the psychological view, that the extortionist provided a clear deadline and so there was less incentive to pay to reduce uncertainty (dislike of uncertainty seems related to loss aversion): You would be tempted to pay early if the ending date was unknown. I am surprised he made that public. Finally, Joshua Zelinsky speculated on broader implications of the extortionist’s failure: This suggests that people only take exponential discounting seriously when it isn’t made explicit. If one thinks that hyperbolic discounting makes more sense though then this ransom doesn’t really work. Outcome I made 2 predictions about how my anonymous extortionist would react to my public declaration: He will reply: 65% If he spent the time registering the username and contacting me, after such a rebuke, I expected a reply if only to justify his peculiar payment schedule. Unfortunately, I was wrong and as of 2013-12-15, I have not heard a peep from him, and further, the Bitcoin address 1LtiftPcu3AjTbXf2XFCbvNTaeRFL1yBAy has been inactive since. He will not attempt a second extortion: 65% As I said at the time, “if it didn’t work the first time, why would it work elsewhere?” Indeed. I’d said no and given a general explanation of why I could not pay for the entire class of extortion attempts. I paid nothing and suffered no harm, so I regard this mostly as an amusing example of the use of Bitcoin for extortion. 2013 DPR? 7 November At 5:13PM I received a curious PM on Reddit: Sorry for all the trouble I caused. I know I fuck up alot. This privnote contains everything to cover your ass, its how I connected you to you. https://privnote.com/n/mhstglglfojgxgqb/#opzcvoxulwcwlskl Sorry for fucking up what you had. I was just desperate and was trying to cling to anything I could. You won’t let me vend proper, you won’t leave me alone and just let me do my thing. I felt like I had nothing else to turn to, and if you were going to sink my ship, I would to yours. My dog died today because we couldn’t afford her medication. Such is life. Here is the pgp if you don’t want to click that link. It formatted proper in pgp. —–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—– Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (MingW32) hQIMA8J30uIoggNFAQ/9GJDAeJ3P+C7oqcV6deaYXpIStWzSPgF5jhcLgrCHZ7c9 gf16Qi7F1p/HFN7WgarpxBboET9w3/7BXy9+wRueODJV/qffg781kl8pyOtlcHXX d7JpYOZVi8o/faimlsapSP5kMbmhTqPJFsCQ+H7IfI2NRkLXWi9yezq5jNRu9VRb Jda5BvKq37G1F+d5bxKOpJMNxDn2gL3Gz+IbaShHnO9+UtoPR1BbNZqjV/H+TLKm 5J7zWHYU0kwe6fGhY9SobD3QSAXIDNnd6ONYC4tmHOcjMK4SfKVm01uECq6bxGLH l8e5my9CQEME/zr7AapDX9y77AwXuoiah5ZfjFwvyaz/V2C1sOcov2Ws/Z/BT4mL sxwEehEfL0+D1MeoKRJBz73JCxPsRqLUfOK9kax828uEbo7gDPJZdTXPx9z4cfZG 83mSdEQt4gKve8PUTqs6RndJIxZ6Ua1uLW4kS7TZuKXT69QnOTYM1zv3Fh4xz95l R36zbbUUN8ZcolphOr6t2kTAYJlsV17Qiw3+9dTtI5XFSq/Us6FqMcz9Tvh23n7c RVfn49+SH9WjaFz7KvpYw3l68ZdhzPNFIvHLbE1q4LZfut2b9SC3zOHc/nqdKg+H nt0vNljKfuw5Kdb3Jh5e7Gpx2iTfxfQz5dZ5aZ4ITlv7YDNvRVKcg0apVQFqrW7S wSIB13pbIgzlnblI2j/OurmagWJB84fGjGTnBs8Zj7qTG5dRdXRrXZOi2vViNs/u 5F6I6Er34qzCuU2a1VxehrZI5AZ9ivtbQvs6//HbnjVo2kXv9vStepMFlCd4fbCY J/ZJ0Fsk49jjEoODmqVBifPwDGREmYnbtL/uewrOLOrl0nmO9JUii0V8ZL9qBKZM 3Jh2Q8y84O059M+m0oIptBmF8IFfpH+4NtD6Sg6oaVNOja+/rw8+heih3CIo0NGq xLia3qaK/DPBa5wT7skuLfFf6VTZopOvNDir1RPXpHWpJAPk80lQorqKP3Y5KOTo sdzsWzOmvbLvfeaIRccqbds7KGAiZq+WMj7FiTpv309q7AaK16vgC7ndot+pAHyU AZqCZ2W/JCIO+CeF7WYpKfFEXVM/vd4Z08ov2EC30BtLc/nRGGe3L/ZWfs3krA4v CpLad/RoN42KEds0Y0JO7ZHkLf3qb7b3LLFQXGFkjGkY39HpH1AVfG+jQz3geHIx RHaiRNKy2B/Zh3aKxOmPHazxOiyUh8yAn8YtndM3RRVa9D2avaUoTrqqj/mYM31Q 6iYqxwchqxs8DOu2nwchH3aQmNVJjvmGP+zS9fE8dbehvarYj65Q9YUV3RKHJ6cw 5AUiCg== =5yAt —–END PGP MESSAGE—– Again, sorry about being a piece of shit. Although i’m sure thats not enough. Don’t worry. I won’t ever say your name again. The