Having PieFed etc. in here could help raise awareness I made a Pull Request to add it, hopefully it gets accepted https://github.com/ente-io/privacypack/pull/122

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[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

A default installation of Lemmy/Piefed won't track users beyond what they intentionally do on the site. But if you want to be sure, then you can always host your own instance of one person. (In addition to all user activity), other instances can only see the IP of the instance the account is hosted on.

If you want something to be private then well, don't post to the public web (as a reminder- DMs aren't private on Piefed/Lemmy). If you want to be anonymous, then use a VPN and don't repeat a username you used elsewhere.

[–] FailBetter@crust.piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Thanks for DM tip, I didn't think about it, but I guess that explains the need for something like the matrix protocol. Only thing i've ever hosted myself was a simplex chat smtp/xftp server on a vps. I basically just closely followed a guide from simplifiedprivacy with a readymade script and already knew how to ssh into stuffs. Do you recommend hosting a one person instance strictly as an experiment to verify that nothings being tracked? Or would concentrating my lemmy/piefed use strictly through a self-hosted one person instance account help to ensure nothing but what I'm 'intentionally doing' is tracked? I'm looking to get sold on hosting, but I'm also not really in a spot to waste money on another vps just for fun.

Also I really need a good resource to finally stop confusing privacy/anonymity/other similar security concepts. Thank you greatly for the patience and help

[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 6 days ago

Or would concentrating my lemmy/piefed use strictly through a self-hosted one person instance account help to ensure nothing but what I’m ‘intentionally doing’ is tracked?

It would ensure that yes. The other instance would only see the IP of your instance, not browser information or anything else. I haven't tried selfhosting, so I can't speak to it's difficulty, but as far as I know, there is no reason to distrust any of the major Lemmy or Piefed instances. I'm not an expert and it is open source software so anyone could theoretically edit the code if they wanted.

And privacy refers to having control over who can see your personal information, anonymity means being unidentifiable.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

!privacy@programming.dev could be a good community for you