this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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I think they are leaving out something quite important in this blog post - nobody is using their real names here.

It's very different from Meta or Google or whatever big tech company people have accounts on, where they know your real name and many more details, such as phone number and address.

I don't see the privacy danger in someone sweeping up what we are talking about here, since we are pseudo anonymous. Am I missing something?

Whats the value of random aliases discussing something and why is that a privacy issue?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is sadly a text written with much confidence about something they understand very little about. Especially the part about the GDPR is IANAL completely wrong.

Yes, DMs over AP are not secure. That's why there is the big banner above it in nearly every AP implementation. The rest is pretty much FUD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you explain a bit more about private messaging over AP? I'm unable to find much. So if I sent you a private message, is that viewable in plain text by not just the instance owner we're both on, but other federated instances too?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if I sent you a private message, is that viewable in plain text by not just the instance owner we’re both on

Yes.

other federated instances too?

Not by design, but instances can misbehave.

private messaging over AP

Private is misleading here: for messaging to be private, no third party should be able to read the messages. In practice, this usually requires end-to-end encryption.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@cnx

I have not checked each and every translation on the Fediverse, but maybe this is just a problem of Direct Message vs Private Message.

@spiritedaway