I’ve been feeling uneasy about the privacy implications of using Lemmy and similar platforms. The ability for anyone to view your entire posting history feels to me like publicly sharing my browser history. In contrast, most other social media platforms allow you to limit your feed visibility to just friends or followers.
I’m curious to hear from the community - what are the most private social media platforms you’ve come across? I vaguely remember stumbling upon one that automatically removed content after six months and had some other interesting privacy features. Can anyone refresh my memory or recommend some other private alternatives?
If you have a username attached to a publicly posted comment, people will be able to see your history. The internet is forever. Publicly posted comments are, by definition, not private. Treating them as such, in any capacity, is a mistake.
The biggest thing is to not post personal details, or to even post accumulations of details over many comments that can narrow things down. The weather where you are at the time, what type of car you drive (or your lack of a car), what type of job you have, etc, etc, etc. On their own, each of these pieces of information don’t mean much, but you start putting them together and you can narrow things down considerably.
It is also not a bad idea to occasionally throw in some misinformation about yourself. Maybe you don’t drive a Corolla, but instead a Hilux.
As an olympic swimming medalist in istanbul I find my hilux to be the perfect blend of comfort and rugged dependability.
i drive a Hilux
I drive a hard bargain.
What sort people are you trying throw off your trail? Genuine question as I’m not a frequenter of privacy communities.
Unless you’re a investigative journalist, what are the odds details such as weather, car, type of job would be compiled by someone to identify you?
There are lots of random assholes on the internet. I like when they are forced to stay on the internet and not able to bring their asshollery into one’s real life.
Sure, but what random psycho would go through all your comments collecting data like weather on a specific day, car, job, etc… just to mess with you in real life. That’s like one in a billion unless you specifically seek out those kind of people.
Scraping experiments have been done in the Fediverse several times and with the booming A.I. such an action does not seem very unlikely to me.