but that instance owners have even more, probably more valuable info, like IP addresses from which not just geolocation but also wake times, device usage patterns and other gnarly stuff could be extracted, that could - together with other personalized surveillance info (like the usual adware stuff) - be aggregated to give a bigger picture.

I have IP behind the geolocation. How do you think that I know the geolocation? It's an IP lookup. My interface that I shown in the image just doesn't publish it because I don't care personally. What I use that service for is simply to track where sensitive emails/documents go. Not to track lemmy. I don't need specific resolutions. Just to know if they leak outside of what I expected.

Device patterns? The app you use is the app you use. That would be given away via your browser header. I also collect that with the tracking image. Just once again. Not shown in the graph cause I don't care to track it personally (I'm only doing this as an example, not to actually aggregate data).

If you use lemmy over the web browser, browsers don't really give up that much information unless you're google themselves. In which case apparently chrome gives up a boatload of information to google's domains.

not-so-public information

You'd have to give me an example of any of what you're referencing. I can collect IP, web headers, access times, and if I tag enough pages or mark the image as non-cacheable could even see multiple views/accesses (you see views higher than actual visitors) I can track your movement across all of the fediverse.

that one can get some info about me through my (public) actions

Simply "viewing" the page (which pulls the image and is not necessarily "public") is a direct rebuttal to obtaining data that isn't "public".

[–] frankenswine@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

are you trying to get my point?

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've addressed the points you've brought up. I run my own instance. I can collect just about everything in the DB tables I've seen without being logged into the instance with some external work.

Are you trying to get my point? If you have a specific item that you believe is stored on a lemmy server that you think isn't possible to obtain. I'm all ears. otherwise I think this conversation is done. This kind of response is pointless and I'm not interested in continuing if you're going to act like that.

The hardest thing to collect would be private messages, and login information (which is hashed btw, so even your server operator doesn't really know it). But messages are plaintext and openly federated. All the other information is really really easy to collect through other means.

[–] frankenswine@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

First if all: my Not Sure Fry was intended as a joke.

So, just to understand you correctly:

I can collect just about everything in the DB tables I've seen without being logged into the instance with some external work. Can you see which communities I follow? Which feeds I watch (and when I do that)? Who I interact with through DMs?

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 1 points 4 days ago

Can you see which communities I follow?

Wouldn't need to see it directly. If someone was to tag enough posts they could deduce it over time. Eg, I could post on every community on every lemmy in the fediverse and over time I can be reasonably sure which communities you follow as you'd see these post in your feed and tracking images would populate your view of them as you scrolled. Would take very little automation to do it.

Which feeds I watch (and when I do that)?

Yes.. because it's possible to use "normal" images to track who's downloading those images, what addresses/user agent/referrers over time is powerful. After enough time, it's entirely possible to deduce which feeds/communities you're watching. Eg, if I post 10 different items, and 3 of them come back to your specific IP address, I would have a really good estimate on which feeds you're likely on. Do this at scale and I bet you could deduce it completely and probably with much less time and hassle than you're thinking. Hell because of my reverse proxy I can see EVERYONE who loads my profile picture. I see ALL the users to run into my posts on complete fucking accident. Lemmy loads /inbox to pull that data.

Hell this is the core reason why everyone pushes back on 3rd party cookies these days. It made this tracking trivial. Tagging every page with some image or asset that forces a connection is effectively the same thing.

Who I interact with through DMs?

I've already stated clearly that this would be the hardest thing. Just because there's one or 2 things that would be hard or impossible to obtain (even over time) passively or as a complete outsider doesn't make the rest of the argument wrong. All it would take is either site operator to leak the data, any type of MITM, etc... to leak the plaintext content of your DMs. Hell federation leaks where it sends data outside of the expected subscribers has happened. Then you have to also realize that many instances use services like Cloudflare or other WAF solutions to stop DDOS's and such.... Those nodes can read the plaintext DMs and all federation data. Any malicious actor that manages to break any single part of the chain has access to it all... and it can be quite trivial in many instances to do so.

The Lemmy system is not "secure". It's not meant to be. Everything on the fediverse is public and all of your actions here are trackable by many parties in many ways even outside of the operators of both ends of the federation action itself. Including how you're connecting and using the system.

DMs alone, and actual hashed passwords are not really needed for a third party threat to act malicious and get all of the aggregated data they'd ever want. You pointed out specifics, I answered those specifics. Then you pivoted to other shit that I ALREADY outlined. This argument is super disingenuous.