Hey there!
I’m thinking about starting a blog about privacy guides, security, self-hosting, and other shenanigans, just for my own pleasure. I have my own server running Unraid and have been looking at self-hosting Ghost as the blog platform. However, I am wondering how “safe” it is to use one’s own homelab for this. If you have any experience regarding this topic, I would gladly appreciate some tips.
I understand that it’s relatively cheap to get a VPS, and that is always an option, but it is always more fun to self-host on one’s own bare metal! :)
it seems pretty sub-optimal for a personal site to be publicly associated with even a permanent IP address
What’s the downside you see from having a static IP address?
I don’t see any way to achieve this without a CDN, unfortunately.
I think you’re looking for a reverse proxy. CDNs are essentially reverse proxies with edge caching (their main feature is that they cache files on servers that are closer to a user), but it sounds like you don’t really care about the caching for your use case?
I don’t know if any companies provide reverse proxies without a CDN though.
What’s the downside you see from having a static IP address?
What’s the downside to having one’s phone number in the public directory? There’s no security risk and yet plenty of people opt out. It’s personally identifying information.
I don’t know if any companies provide reverse proxies without a CDN though.
Exactly.
What’s the downside to having one’s phone number in the public directory?
The difference is that an IP of a VPS doesn’t directly connect back to you. It’s in the provider’s name. Some providers let you change your IP address to a different one for a small fee.
Yes yes, I know all that. The fact remains that a permanent IP associated with an individual is personally identifying information. Even the variety in browser requests counts as such according to the GDPR, and that is usually pooled with lots of other users. This is clearly a level above that. It’s why, for example, I would not use the VPS for proxy web browsing: zero privacy.