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When I sign up under an instance, what information am I sharing to the host? (geddit.social)

submitted 1 year ago by Cayenne05dingos@geddit.social to c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml

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Privacy drove me off reddit, I looked around for these answers but not sure where to come across them.

Am I sharing my IP address/ location with my host instance?
is there a log of my view history
are there general privacy concerns that I am not thinking of?

I do not want to be in a position where a Government creates an instance, and allows them to monitor.

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[–] terribleplan@lemmy.nrd.li 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Every time you visit any website someone will know your IP address. Unless very specific measues are taken that "someone" will be whoever operates that website.

Lemmy has features (I think they are optional) that will tell you that you viewed a post and how many new comments a post has from the last time you viewed it, that necessarily requires tracking. I cannot say whether turning this feature off disables the tracking or just doesn't show you that information without digging into the code, this is only local to your instance.

There is also likely to be some level of logging at the server and any reverse proxy layers that could, with effort, be used to figure out what you looked at with reasonable accuracy. Again, this is only on your instance. Some instances may not create/store logs, but it is usually important to do so to troubleshoot if things go wrong, especially with as immature a software project Lemmy is.

Any time you visit a website you are putting a large amount of trust in the site operator, your ISP, your DNS provider, etc. if state actors are in your threat model.