# Privacy best practices

### Staying private in crypto: best practices with Common Trace Breaker

Privacy is a growing concern in the blockchain space. While traditional blockchains offer transparency, they often do so at the expense of user confidentiality. Common aims to change this by introducing zero-knowledge privacy for Web3.

Here’s how you can use the Trace Breaker feature in the Common Web App effectively to protect your on-chain identity.

#### 1. **Shield your assets regularly**

**The more actions you perform on a single public account, the easier it becomes for observers to analyze your holdings, behavior patterns, and possibly identify you**—shielding helps disrupt that visibility.

Start by transferring your tokens from your public addresses into the Shielder. This process moves your assets from the public chain into a private pool, breaking the traceable link between addresses.

It’s visible on-chain that you’re depositing assets to Shielder–but observers won’t notice whether your assets are still shielded or if you’ve moved them elsewhere.

#### 2. **Use fresh addresses for interactions**

To prevent correlation between transactions:

* Generate a **new address** for each withdrawal or interaction with the public chain.
* Avoid reusing addresses when receiving or sending funds from the Shielder.

#### 3. **Time-delay your transactions**

Avoid creating predictable patterns:

* Wait random intervals before moving funds in or out.
* Do not withdraw the exact amount you deposited—same amounts wil make tracing easier.

#### 4. **Minimize metadata leakage**

When transacting:

* Avoid posting associated wallet information publicly (e.g., ENS names or addresses linked on social media).
* Consider your browser and device fingerprinting—use privacy-focused tools like Tor or VPNs where appropriate.

#### 6. **Understand the limitations**

Privacy in blockchain is never absolute. While Shielder provides robust privacy using zk-SNARKs:

* It depends on user behavior for best result.
* Your actions outside of Shielder (e.g., centralized exchanges, KYC) can still compromise privacy.


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