I’m not sure that this is how it works in practice, but ideally:
Unless you are registered in their stance / are browsing directly in their website, your client shouldn’t be making any direct requisitions to their instance, so there is nothing they can infer your IP from.
(Everything you interact with is comes directly your instance - the only thing that interacts with other instances is the server)
That said, it’s possible for some links to direct to the original stance, in which case your client will have to make requests directly to the original instance hosting the content… looking around in this page a bit, it looks like the Community images (banner, icon etc.) are linking directly to the original instance, so I guess that’s a little bit of a problem - but just that shouldn’t be enough information for them to connect the dots between the IP address fetching the image and the account you’re using to browse
To expand on this. If you are talking about anything online it is not private. That doesn’t matter if it’s in a WhatsApp chat, a telegram chat, a Lemmy post, a Facebook feed, etc. as soon as it hits a computer if someone wants to see it they will. There’s just hurdles to get it.
Depends what and how you do it. VPN gives some level of anonymity. TOR even more so. These give you probably greater anonymity than anything else you have in offline live.
Is it possible a film studio, or legal agency, could set up a Lemmy Instance and then capture all our IPs?
I’m not sure that this is how it works in practice, but ideally: Unless you are registered in their stance / are browsing directly in their website, your client shouldn’t be making any direct requisitions to their instance, so there is nothing they can infer your IP from. (Everything you interact with is comes directly your instance - the only thing that interacts with other instances is the server) That said, it’s possible for some links to direct to the original stance, in which case your client will have to make requests directly to the original instance hosting the content… looking around in this page a bit, it looks like the Community images (banner, icon etc.) are linking directly to the original instance, so I guess that’s a little bit of a problem - but just that shouldn’t be enough information for them to connect the dots between the IP address fetching the image and the account you’re using to browse
unless you visit the instance yourself or activitypub starts including user ips
I think not as the only instance that has your ip is the one you are registered on.
One would hope…
AP protocol doesn’t propagate your IP
They would just have to start DMing us meme images hosted on a server they control, and they’d get a list of IPs. All we’d have to do is look.
Fwiw, this would work on Reddit too.
Unless anyone shared the in image link anywhere else on the internet. “Judge, they looked at this publicly accessible image” is hardly evidence
Only if you directly use their instance.
Absolutely. One of the biggest child porn groups is an FBI front for this purpose. I’d google the subject for a link but umm…no
So basically the only thing protecting our anonymity is the relative unpopularity of Lemmy?
To expand on this. If you are talking about anything online it is not private. That doesn’t matter if it’s in a WhatsApp chat, a telegram chat, a Lemmy post, a Facebook feed, etc. as soon as it hits a computer if someone wants to see it they will. There’s just hurdles to get it.
If you want anonymity stop using computers.
Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.
You’re not anonymous online either FYI.
Depends what and how you do it. VPN gives some level of anonymity. TOR even more so. These give you probably greater anonymity than anything else you have in offline live.