Privacy

31268 readers

862 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Lemmy and privacy issues (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So. I thought about the potential of bad actors sniffing on lemmy data. In theory, you'ld have to trust your lemmy-instance hosted to not be a bad actor and every single server they federated with. That means, it should be really - REALLY - easy for a bad actor of even a nation state actor to set up an instance and just wait for the data of users to pour in.

Theoretically they could see all the posts you ever made, and, every post you upvoted. Which also gives clues on: When are you active, what region are you from, what you like and dislike (obviously), political views, etc.

I mean - Maybe I'm too suspicious but tbh the more I read into this, the more I get a bad feeling about this...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What is “data of users”? Federated instances don’t get anything except username. Only the instance owner sees your IP address and browsing habits

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes. But it is pretty easy to "connect the dots". A lot of people are reusing their usernames, which makes them identifiable. And since the other instances do save data like Posts you made, likes or dislikes you send, it can be pretty easy to make a profile out of your data and identify you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Hmm...if people followed basic privacy rules, like not reusing usernames, it wouldn't be an issue.

Lemmy is not a privacy focused platform. End of story. Neither is Reddit or Facebook.

If you want to be anonymous and private, either use TOR or disconnect your internet.