this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Although i am quite a lurker in Lemmy, i don't have the time to be an active contributor, nor i wish to give away too much personal information nor i want to add an unnecessary addiction into my life, which is why i don't maintain a permanent account. However i do periodically have questions that I feel like only communities from Lemmy would be able to answer to my satisfaction, which is why i create burner accounts in my private window which i close after i am done with it.

But after creating many such accounts for this purpose, i feel like i am not doing it properly. I feel guilty abandoning accounts that take up space in servers of instances which are constantly fighting against spam and DDOS attacks; it feels like i am participating in the attack too. However i believe i should not delete the posts, for it may come useful for me in the future and for other people browsing the communities.

What methods should i adopt to further make my use of burner accounts in Lemmy more beneficial to me (in terms of anonymity and future account creations) as well as others (instances in terms of spam and members in terms of posts/comments)? Should I maintain a single account or permanently delete these accounts once i'm done with them?

For context, I use a VPN and Tor Browser and a disposable email for instances requiring email for account creation.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

Just curious why you’d go to such lengths to maintain privacy.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re probably of no interest to any authority. Unless you KNOW you’re doing something illegal.

To be clear I’m not saying that we all shouldn’t value privacy but, for example, could you not just keep an account for 6 months then delete?

Or are you worried that some 3 letter agencies will bust through your door within that time frame?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If you are a human posting, you're contributing to the community. It shouldn't matter if it's your only or have X accounts that you use/don't use. In general, ddos attacks are more timing related in combination with data quantity not just raw data, since a new user account doesn't take up much space and neither does their posts (this isn't 100% the case, but usually the case. Also haven't read lemmy's source code, just general discussion)