Maybe so, but some information is safer to reveal than others
Option A: the receiver gives the sender a one-time payment string, the sender pays it, and the the receiver irrecoverably discards every trace that he ever had the payment string
Option B: the receiver gives the sender a reusable payment string, the sender pays it, and they both keep the string forever
The latter is worse for privacy because the shared piece of data ties the sender and the recipient together, it stands as an everlasting proof that they interacted. At least one of them should discard it because if it is found on them both, it is evidence that they once interacted. But there is only one way for each to be sure that at least one of them destroyed it: destroy it yourself.
This is not encouraged in monero; on the contrary, the standard contact list feature encourages the sender to keep the receiver's monero address and reuse it, and the standard recommendation for the receiver is never to delete his private keys, because someone might send him money at an old address, not knowing he deleted the keys.
Super Testnet
npub1yx…c399s
2025-06-20 06:32:58 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…z8xe
Author Public Key
npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399sSeen on
wss://nos.lolPublished at
2025-06-20 06:32:58 UTCEvent JSON
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"pubkey": "2183e94758481d0f124fbd93c56ccaa45e7e545ceeb8d52848f98253f497b975",
"created_at": 1750401178,
"kind": 1,
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"content": "Maybe so, but some information is safer to reveal than others\n\nOption A: the receiver gives the sender a one-time payment string, the sender pays it, and the the receiver irrecoverably discards every trace that he ever had the payment string\n\nOption B: the receiver gives the sender a reusable payment string, the sender pays it, and they both keep the string forever\n\nThe latter is worse for privacy because the shared piece of data ties the sender and the recipient together, it stands as an everlasting proof that they interacted. At least one of them should discard it because if it is found on them both, it is evidence that they once interacted. But there is only one way for each to be sure that at least one of them destroyed it: destroy it yourself.\n\nThis is not encouraged in monero; on the contrary, the standard contact list feature encourages the sender to keep the receiver's monero address and reuse it, and the standard recommendation for the receiver is never to delete his private keys, because someone might send him money at an old address, not knowing he deleted the keys.",
"sig": "5f624017eed04a8dd474cbf24f057a840949973f269a42d299b360ea2c37ce91bdf3e2bcc958679ee51342779fec7361bbbf486f01a419a43e4350487593a6a2"
}