Sorry to post my shitty neofetch to this community
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
2079 points (94.5% liked)
linuxmemes
20880 readers
8 users here now
I use Arch btw
Sister communities:
- LemmyMemes: Memes
- LemmyShitpost: Anything and everything goes.
- RISA: Star Trek memes and shitposts
Community rules
- Follow the site-wide rules and code of conduct
- Be civil
- Post Linux-related content
- No recent reposts
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I know what you mean. It suck but whatever it's better than giving data to a big company.
I mean, in this way we are basically giving data to every big company, aren't we?
The important thing is: it's not traced back to you. It's possible to see everything for everyone, sure. But nobody knows that it's you and that's why it's not as much worth
That's not how it works though? They don't need to know "who you are," because with ads you have a unique identifying number. If you are browsing the web and your ads become more catered to you then you are giving data somewhere.
Privacy is about maintaining as little about yourself as personally possible. That is what gets me about this app. Half the users on here have very little idea how the Internet works. Privacy and security aren't about going, "I support open source and decentralized software so the big man doesn't have my data," but that is not how that works at all. Just because you aren't giving your data to Mark Zuckerberg and you don't support Facebook doesn't mean you aren't exposing your giving data to someone else.
I also truly don't think Lemmy users realize how exposed they are potentially making themselves. Even if the API is free and your app is open source and it isn't Elon Musk showing you your image of a cat does not mean you are private and secure.
Lemmy services and instances are hosted on a server and use an API that is open to anyone and everyone that wants to host an instance and community. So instead you are entrusting your data to someone you don't know on their hardware that you don't know anything about.
From a security and privacy point of view Lemmy is a nightmare. Mastadon, etc. Even if your data is encrypted or passed along secure channels and you can migrate your data to some other instances does not mean you are safe. That is not how the law works either. If a national government agency shows up and issues an order for their server data and that data isn't protected properly by the host well then you are exposed. The people acting like they know something more because you decided to pay for Sync or because you want to use Windows or Google literally no zero fucks about privacy and data.
No, thats exactly it. When you post something on reddit, Google collects your browser information for your "unique identifying number" by having scripts implemented into Reddits site. Google then knows, that u/Prethoryn is your account and they can then collect the data from your reddit account and link it to you.
But your Lemmy instance (so far) does not do that. You post something here and google sees that some "[email protected]" guy wrote something, but their data-collecting can't link it to your unique identifying number, because lemmy.world does not collect that information from you. And of course, your comment is federated to thousands of other instances. But they also can't sell more information than what is available when you look at Google. If lemmy.world decides to implement tracking, this of course changes. But for now, your comment is not linked to you and it's definitely a step up in privacy (regarding companies) than before.
The other aspect of privacy, personal privacy, is of course not so good on the fediverse and that's where your points make valid sense. If you want to delete your comments because your friends discovered your secret account, it's basically impossible because of the federation.
Well technically I am using a Google pixel phone to access Lemmy through an app that I downloaded from their store, using the same phone and ISP that I use to chat with my mother on Facebook Messenger, shop on Marketplace, order on Amazon and check my mails. I also tried the connect-your-phone thing to read my SMS on the computer, so Microsoft also got in.
Everyone knows everything I do at this point.
I don't know where you live but in most of the world it would be illegal for them to spy on what you do in the apps. Yes, Google knows that you use Lemmy and also Facebook knows that. But they are not allowed to spy on what you do inside those apps and can't link your account to your phone if you don't use an app that sells this data (aka Sync)