Now is a good time to remind users that you are placing some trust in the instance that you use. Lemmy is not anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your instance can do pretty much anything with your account up to and including turning your account into a sock puppet, and they know exactly where you’re connecting from.
With that said, it’s a lot better than most social media today that actively tries to violate your privacy at every turn.
This is part of why I signed up through FMHY. If anybody is going to try to protect my privacy it is probably going to be the very actively pro-piracy group.
To add to this: some instances require your email address, and others don’t.
Obviously there are plenty of other ways you won’t be really anonymous, but if it’s important to you, one step in mitigating issues is not to have an email associated with your account.
I’ve been partial to https://mailinator.com, but some services are getting wise to it (and blocking *@mailinator.com addresses). Thanks for sharing an alternative!
Your instance could (edit: theoretically, if they’re running custom Lemmy code) track you by your browser fingerprint (screen size, installed fonts, plugins, etc.). Others could keep a profile on you based on what you comment/post/upvote and when.
Now is a good time to remind users that you are placing some trust in the instance that you use. Lemmy is not anonymous. It is pseudo-anonymous. Your instance can do pretty much anything with your account up to and including turning your account into a sock puppet, and they know exactly where you’re connecting from.
With that said, it’s a lot better than most social media today that actively tries to violate your privacy at every turn.
This is part of why I signed up through FMHY. If anybody is going to try to protect my privacy it is probably going to be the very actively pro-piracy group.
To add to this: some instances require your email address, and others don’t.
Obviously there are plenty of other ways you won’t be really anonymous, but if it’s important to you, one step in mitigating issues is not to have an email associated with your account.
You can always use https://10minutesemail.net/ for the required email. No muss no fuss
I’ve been partial to https://mailinator.com, but some services are getting wise to it (and blocking *@mailinator.com addresses). Thanks for sharing an alternative!
What about using something like a protonmail address for all social media email?
A good strategy, but still less secure by definition than no email at all.
Iirc proton mail has a backdoor. Though they likely won’t be used outside of ‘nať-sećurity interests’.
Guys, this is fact, also downvotes aren’t private.
You may know the answer to this. If I’ve signed up with no email, and whilst on a secure VPN, how are they going to track me?
Your instance could (edit: theoretically, if they’re running custom Lemmy code) track you by your browser fingerprint (screen size, installed fonts, plugins, etc.). Others could keep a profile on you based on what you comment/post/upvote and when.