When I sign up under an instance, what information am I sharing to the host? - eviltoast

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.

  • neosheo@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Ok, so by visiting a server you are sharing your IP (obviously you could use VPN/Tor to prevent that). By clicking your username I can see your posts but I cannot see what you view. I’m not even sure if a server admin could see that, but they could potentially correlate your IP with the pages you request. However, I don’t think a server admin with federation would be able to see what you visit since the federated content is duplicated on your home server, so i think it would still only be visible to your server’s admin. Not 100% sure tho, hopefully someone will chime in that knows more

    But this is a great example of why you need to find a server admin you trust, because servers could also run modified lemmy code or be tracking user data, etc