Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed serious warnings over the new location-tagging feature unveiled on X, warning that while real users face privacy risks, skilful attackers would be capable of bypassing the system in next to no time.
The feature, which is accessible on user profiles by tapping on the registration date, has been released worldwide through the platform’s “About This Account” section since November 22. It displays the country or region of origin of an account.
Vitalik’s comments
Buterin’s critique centres around the functionality’s risk to exploitation where fraudulent overseas political troll accounts are predicted to pose as US or UK citizens within the next six months again.
He argued it would be hard to set up fictitious geolocations for an entire million accounts; however, it would be elementary to set up even a single account with a fictitious geolocation and build it up to a million followers via methods such as leased IPs, phone numbers, and passports, and control the account at will.
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“I thought about this more and I think responders are right that revealing the country non- ‘consensually without offering any opt-out option, not even stop using your account, is wrong,” Buterin later said.
Privacy concerns on X
Critics from within the cryptocurrency space, including Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams, who labelled the feature as ‘psychotic’ and questioned the necessity of enforcement, particularly differentiation of doxxing as opt-in v. opt-out, as voluntary doxxing is acceptable.
Nevertheless, the expected adoption of the feature is particularly alarming to cryptocurrency holders, given their history of the industry being cyber-attacked and/or kidnapped in connection to their digital assets.
Buterin did a full circle and modified his position, claiming that to disclose personal location data without permission, or with the ability to “opt out” is user-hostile.
“There are some people for whom even a few bits of leakage are risky, and they should not have their privacy retroactively rugpulled with no recourse,” he wrote.
Experts pitch in
Maxim Mironov, a professor of finance at IE Business School, said that the feature may work similarly to spam protection methods, contending that adding fees for fabricating country information would lessen bot activity.
Buterin retorted that the existing approach necessitates individual users to personally verify each account’s location, eliminating any benefits of bulk verification and only being helpful for high-profile accounts that are worth specifically looking into.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote and signed the new “Trustless Manifesto,” which encourages builders to avoid introducing intermediaries for adoption while preserving the core ideas of decentralisation and resilience to censorship.
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