It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a long-running account on any platform can easily be used to build a profile of someone.

Since many discussions on Lemmy and other platforms can often cause someone to write about their job, family, hobbies, where they live (city/community), etc., there’s a lot of concern about non-private post history being used against someone.

Other than using fake names, throwaway emails, etc. are there any other best practices for handling this?

Should we be creating new accounts/profiles every once in a while?

  • Semmelstulle@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 years ago

    Well I guess it is like with every other social media. I think the most private you can be while using social media is using it in your browser only. There you can make use of strict content blocking and manipulate websites to work around login walls. For posting stuff I always recommend to strip out any metadata from files beforehand and really only include in your posts what’s necessary.
    The threadiverse and fediverse only differ in being mostly public, scraping stuff would be easy. From what I believe, trashing and creating accounts all the time will not only cost you lots of convenience but would also make you gain almost no extra privacy.

    • Showroom7561OP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      For posting stuff I always recommend to strip out any metadata from files

      Yeah, I do this when posting photos, and it’s a good reminder.

      I guess my concerns are less about browser/server snooping, but more about what data is publicly accessible from someone’s post history.

      I’ve heard of some people creating accounts for certain topics, rather than one account for everything. This would compartmentalize any posts and limit them only to a narrow range of topics. Do you think there’s value in doing that?